PERSONAL IDEALISM
/
S<33e
P
PERSONAL IDEALISM
PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS BY
EIGHT MEMBERS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
EDITED BY
HENRY STURT
Hontion
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I902
All rights reserved
PREFACE
This volume originated in the conversations and discus-
sions of a group of friends drawn together primarily by
their membership in the Oxford Philosophical Society.
The Society was started in the spring of 1898, and
among some of the most regular attendants at its meetings
a certain sympathy of view soon declared itself. In the
course of two years the trend of opinion had grown so
definite as to suggest to me the project of a volume of
essays. Among those who seemed likely to contribute I
circulated a programme which made it the object of our
volume " to represent a tendency in contemporary thinking,
to signalise one phase or aspect in the development of
Oxford idealism." That tendency was summed up in a
phrase which I thought I was originating at the time I
wrote the programme, though it seems to have occurred
independently to others.1 It is the phrase we have chosen
for our title, "Personal Idealism." For me our volume
fulfils the purpose with which it was projected so far as it
develops and defends the principle of personality.
Personality, one would have supposed, ought never to
have needed special advocacy in this self-assertive country of
ours. And yet by some of the leading thinkers of our day
it has been neglected ; while by others it has been bitterly
attacked. What makes its vindication the more urgent is
1 Prof. Howison uses it to characterise the metaphysical theory of his Limits
of Evolution, published last year.
V
vi PERSONAL IDEALISM
that attacks have come from two different sides. One
adversary tells each of us : " You are a transitory resultant
of physical processes" ; and the other: " You are an unreal
appearance of the Absolute." Naturalism and Absolutism,
antagonistic as they seem to be, combine in assuring us
that personality is an illusion.
Naturalism and Absolutism, then, are the adversaries
against whom the personal idealist has to strive ; but the
manner of the strife must be different in each case. Per-
sonal Idealism is a development of the mode of thought
which has dominated Oxford for the last thirty years ; it
is not a renunciation of it And thus it continues in the
main the Oxford polemic against Naturalism. To it and
to Naturalism there is no ground common, except that
both appeal to experience to justify their interpretations
of the world. Thus against this adversary the argument
must take the form of showing that from naturalistic
premises no tolerable interpretation of the cardinal facts
of our experience can be made. If it be asked what are
those cardinal facts, I should answer : Those which are
essential to the conduct of our individual life and the
maintenance of the social fabric. They are summarily
recognised in the credo that we are free moral agents in a
sense which cannot apply to what is merely natural.
Round this formula of conviction are grouped the ques-
tions debated with Naturalism in our volume. They are
the reality of human freedom, the limitations of the evolu-
tionary hypothesis, the validity of the moral valuation,
and the justification of that working enthusiasm for ideals
which Naturalism, fatalistic if it is to be logical, must
deride as a generous illusion. If these crucial questions be
decided in our favour, the system of Naturalism is con-
demned.
Accordingly, where Naturalism confronted us, we were
not unfrequently obliged to take the aggressive and carry
PREFACE
Vll
the war far into the enemy's country. But in the other
essays a different line of action has been taken. The
Absolutist is a more insidious, perhaps more dangerous
adversary, just because we seem to have more in common
with him. He professes to agree with us in the funda-
mental conviction that the universe is ultimately spiritual ;
against the naturalist it was just this conviction which had
to be vindicated. We decided, then, to meet the Absolu-
tist with what may be called a rivalry of construction.
Absolutism has been before the world for a century, more
or less. It has put forth its account of knowledge, of
morals, and of art ; and that account, suggestive though it
is, has not satisfied the generality of thinking men. If the
grounds of dissatisfaction be demanded, I can only give
the apparently simple and hackneyed, but still fundamental
answer, that Absolutism does not accord with the facts.
Thus, instead of entering upon the intricate task of refuting
Absolutism, we have felt free to adopt the more congenial
plan of offering specimens of constructive work on a
principle which does more justice to experience. Our
essays are but specimens. They indicate lines of thought
which could not be worked out fully in the space allowed.
But they are extensive enough, let us hope, to enable the
reader to judge whether their general line of interpretation
is not more promising than that of Absolutism.
It may be objected that we are wrong in assuming that
Absolutism cannot be reconciled with the principle of per-
sonality. In reply two points of incompatibility may be
specified shortly; further particularity is impossible without
a much fuller statement, more especially since Absolutism
is not so much a definite system as an aggregate of
tendencies without a universally acknowledged expositor.
The two points in respect of which Absolutism tends l to
1 I use a guarded phrase, because what follows is not entirely true of exponents
of Absolutism so distinguished as Prof. Henry Jones and Prof. Royce.
viii PERSONAL IDEALISM
be most unsatisfactory are, first, its way of criticising human
experience, not from the standpoint of human experience,
but from the visionary and impracticable standpoint of
an absolute experience ; and, secondly, its refusal to
recognise adequately the volitional side of human nature.
Both matters are dealt with in the essay on Error which
stands first in the volume. There it is shown that
error and truth are not dependent upon the Absolute ; in
other words that we can know with certainty without
knowing the absolute whole of Reality ; and that, if we
err, it is by human criteria, not by a theory of the Absolute,
that we measure the degree of our error. Further, in regard
to volition, the same essay shows that error is relative,
not to the content of knowledge only, but also to its
intent, i.e., the intention of the agent in setting out upon
his search for knowledge. The reader may be left to
trace for himself the wider operation of these principles.
In conclusion there is one feature in our essays to
which I would venture to call attention as constituting
what to my mind is the most valuable feature of their
method ; that is, the frequency of their appeal to ex-
perience. The current antithesis between a spiritual
philosophy and empiricism is thoroughly mischievous. If
personal life be what is best known and closest to us,
surely the study of common experience will prove it so.
' Empirical idealism ' is still something of a paradox ; I
should like to see it regarded as a truism.
H. S.
CONTENTS
ESSAV PAGE
I. ERROR. By G. F. Stout, M.A., Wilde Reader in
Mental Philosophy i
II. Axioms as Postulates. By F. C. S. Schiller, M.A.,
Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Corpus Christi
College ...... 47
III. The Problem of Freedom in its Relation to
Psychology. By W. R. Boyce Gibson, M.A.,
Queen's College, Lecturer in London University . 134
IV^The Limits of Evolution. By G. E. Underhill,
M.A., Fellow and Senior Tutor of Magdalen College 193
V. Origin and Validity in Ethics. By R. R.
Marett, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College . 221
VI. Art and Personality. By Henry Sturt, M.A.,
Queen's College . . . . .288
VII. The Future of Ethics : Effort or Abstention ?
By F. W. Bussell, D.D., Fellow, Tutor, and Vice-
Principal of Brasenose College . . . 336
VIII. Personality, Human and Divine. By Hastings
Rashdall, D.Litt., Fellow and Tutor of New College 369
Note. — Each writer is responsible solely for his own essay.
IX
<w
ERROR1
By G. F. Stout
SYNOPSIS
i. In Error, what is unreal seems to be thought of in the same way as the
real is thought of when we truly know it. How is this possible ? As
an essential preparation for answering this question we must first deal
with another. Do other modes of thinking exist besides those which
can be properly said to be either true or false ? There are two such
modes, (i) Indeterminate or problematic thinking. (2) Thinking of
mere appearance without affirming it to be real.
2 and 3. To think indeterminately is to think of something as one of a group
of alternatives, without deciding which. The indeterminateness lies in
not deciding which ; and so far as the indeterminateness extends there
is neither truth nor error. Whatever is thus indeterminately thought
of belongs to the Intent of consciousness. The term Content should
be reserved for what is determinately presented.
In cognitive process, indeterminate thinking takes the form of questioning
as a mental attitude essentially analogous to questioning. Interrogative
thinking is the way we think of something when we are interested in
knowing it, but do not yet know it either truly or falsely. Its distinc-
tive characteristic is that the decision between alternatives is sought
for in the independent reality of the total object in which we are
interested. This object is regarded as having a determinate constitution
of its own, independently of what we may think about it. We are
active in cognitive process only in compelling the object to reveal its
nature. The activity is experimental ; its result is determined for us
and not by us.
In the play of fancy, on the contrary, we do not seek to conform our
thought to the predetermined constitution of our object. We select
alternatives as we please, and to this extent make the object instead of
adapting ourselves to its independent nature.
1 Throughout this essay I am deeply indebted to the criticisms and sugges-
tions of Professor Cook Wilson. In particular, I have substantially adopted his
account of the distinction between abstract terms and adjectives, in place of a less
satisfactory view of my own.
B
2 G. F. STOUT i
4. Besides indeterminate thinking there is yet another mode of thinking
which is neither true nor false. It consists in thinking of mere appear-
ance without taking it for real. This happens, for example, in the play of
fancy. Mere appearance consists in those features of an object of con-
sciousness which are due merely to the special conditions, psychological
and psychophysical, of its presentation, and do not therefore belong to
its independent reality.
5 and 6. Error occurs when what is merely apparent, appears to belong to
an independent reality in the same way as its other real features.
The conditions under which this occurs may be divided under two
heads. (1) Confusion. (2) Ignorance and inadvertence. Ignorance
or inadvertence are present in every error, Confusion only in some.
7. It follows from the very nature of error that it cannot exist unless the
mind is dealing with something independently real. Hence, some truth
is presupposed in every error as its necessary condition.
8. There are limits to the possibility of error. There can be no error
unless in relation to a corresponding reality, which is an object of
thought for him who is deceived. Further, this reality must be capable
of being thought of without the qualification which is said to be illusory.
Hence, among other results, we may affirm that abstract objects cannot
be illusory unless they contain an internal discrepancy. For, they are
considered merely for themselves, and not as the adjectives of any other
reality in relation to which they can be illusory. So far as the abstract
object is merely a selected feature of actual existence, it is not merely
not illusory ; it is real. It is something concerning which we can think
truly or falsely.
9. But the constructive activity of the mind variously transforms and modifies
the abstract object, in ways which may have no counterpart in the
actual. To this extent, the abstract object may be relatively unreal.
None the less, such mental constructions, so far as they belong to
scientific method, are experimental in their character and purpose.
They serve to elicit the real nature of the object as an actual feature
of actual existence. Thus abstract thinking, even when it is construc-
tive, gives rise to judgments concerning what is real. These judgments
may at least be free from the error of ignorance. For the mind may
require no other data to operate on in answering its questions except
those that are already contained in the formulation of them. Errors
of confusion and inadvertence may still occur. But even these are
avoidable by simplifying the problems raised. Thus, abstract thinking
yields a body of certain knowledge.
10. Certainty, then, is attainable. It exists when a question is made to
answer itself, so as to render doubt meaningless. When this is so
the real is present to consciousness, as the illusory can never be.
I. The General Nature of Error
^ 1. The question raised in the present essay is funda-
mentally the same as that discussed in Plato's Thaztetus.
The Thecetetus may be described as a dialogue on Theory
of Knowledge. But the central problem did not take the
same shape for Plato as it does for most modern epistemo-
logists since the time of Descartes. What the moderns
i ERROR 3
trouble themselves about is the nature and possibility of
knowledge in general. How, they ask, can a particular
individual be in such relation to a reality which transcends
and includes his own existence as to know it. Can he
know it otherwise than through the affections of his own
consciousness which it produces? If it can only be known
in this way, can it be said to be known at all ? Are not
his own mental states the only existences which are really
cognised ? Questions of this sort occupy modern philo-
sophers, and they have given rise to the Critique of Pure
Reason, among other results. But I cannot see any
evidence that in this form they gave much trouble to
Plato. The nature and possibility of knowledge would
probably not have constituted a problem for him at all,
had it not been for the existence of error. That we can
know was for him a matter of course, and it was also a
matter of course that we may be ignorant. But he was
puzzled by the conception of something intermediate be-
tween knowing and not knowing. If an object is present
to consciousness, it is pro tanto known ; if it is not present
to consciousness, it is not known. But in so far as it is
known there can be no error, because the knowledge
merely consists in its presence to consciousness. And
again, in so far as it is not known there can be no
error, for what is not known is not present to conscious-
ness : it is to consciousness as if it were non-existent,
and therefore the conscious subject as such cannot
even make a mistake concerning it. Hence we cannot
be in error either in respect to what we know or to
what we don't know, and there seems to be no third
alternative.
This is Plato's problem, and ours is fundamentally akin
to it. For with him we must assert that, in knowing, the
object known must be somehow thought of, and in this
sense present to consciousness. The grand lesson of the
history of Philosophy is just that all attempts to explain
knowledge on any other assumption tumble to pieces in
ruinous incoherence, and that from the nature of the case
they must do so. The only form such attempts can take
4 G. F. STOUT i
is to treat knowledge simply as a case of resemblance,
conformity, or causality, between something we are
conscious of and something we are not conscious of.
What we are conscious of we may be said to know
immediately. But the something we are not conscious
of, how can that be known. The only possible pretence
of an answer is that the knowing of it is wholly constituted
by its somehow resembling, or corresponding to or causing
what is actually present to consciousness. But this
pretended answer in all its forms is utterly indefensible.
The supposed conformity, resemblance, or causality is
nothing to us unless we are in some manner aware of it.
If I am to think of A as resembling B or as corresponding
to it or as causing it, I must think of B as well as of A.
Both A and B must be in some way present to my
consciousness.
The very distinction of truth and error involves this.
Truth is frequently defined as the agreement, and error
as the disagreement, of thought with reality. But this
definition, taken barely as it stands, is defective and mis-
leading. It omits to state that the reality with which thought
is to agree or disagree must itself be thought of, and that
the thinker must intend to think of it as it is. Otherwise
there can be neither truth nor error. I may imagine a
dragon, and it may be a fact that dragons do not actually
exist. But if I do not intend to think of something
which actually exists, I am not deceived. And, on the
same supposition, the actual existence of dragons exactly
resembling what I imagine would not make my thought
true. It would be a curious coincidence and nothing
more. So in general, if we assume a sort of inner circle
of presented objects, and an outside circle of unpresented
realities, we may suppose that the presented objects are
similar or dissimilar to the real existences, or that in some
other way they correspond or fail to correspond to them.
But the resemblance or correspondence would not be truth
and the dissimilarity or non-correspondence would not be
error. Even to have a chance of making a mistake we
must think of something real and we must intend to think
i ERROR 5
of it as it really is. The mistake always consists in
investing it, contrary to our intention, with features which
do not really belong to it. And just here lies the essential
problem. For these illusory features seem to be present
to cognitive consciousness in the same manner as the real
features are.1 How then is it possible that they should
be unreal. This is our problem, and evidently it is closely
akin to that raised by Plato. But there is a difference
and the difference is important. Our difficulty arises from
the fact that when we are in error what is unreal appears
to be present to consciousness in the same manner as
what is real is presented when we truly know. While
the erroneous belief is actually being held, the illusory
object seems in no way to differ for the conscious
subject from a real object. The distinction only arises
when the conscious subject has discovered his mistake,
and then the error as such has ceased to exist. The
essential point is not merely that both the illusory and
the real features are presented, but also that they are
both presented as real and both believed to be real.
It is not enough to say that they are both really
appearances. We must add that they are both apparent
realities.
Now the question did not take this shape for Plato.
The difficulty which he emphasises is not that what is
unreal may be present to consciousness in the same zvay
as what is real. The stumbling-block for him is rather
that it is present to consciousness at all. For what is
present to consciousness must, according to him, be known ;
and if it is known, how can it be unreal ? On the other
hand if it is not present to consciousness, it is simply
unknown. Thus there would seem to be no room for
that something intermediate between knowing and being
ignorant which is called error.
Before proceeding to deal with our own special
difficulty it will be well to examine the Platonic assump-
1 It will be found in the sequel that I admit cases where the conditions which
make error possible are absent, and in these cases the real is present to conscious-
ness in a different manner from that in which the unreal is capable of being
presented.
6 G. F. STOUT i
tion that whatever is in any way present to consciousness,
whatever is in any way thought of, is known — unless
indeed error be an exception. Besides knowing and
being mistaken it is also possible merely to be aware of
a mere appearance which not being taken for reality is
therefore not mistaken for reality. This is a point to
which we shall recur at a later stage. For the present I
wish to draw attention to another mode of thinking which
is neither knowing, nor mere appearance, nor error.
II. Intent and Content
§ 2. Cognitive process involves a transition or at-
tempted transition from ignorance to knowledge, and where
we are trying to make this transition there may be an
intermediate state which is neither knowledge, nor
ignorance, nor error. We may be interested in knowing
what we do not as yet know. But we cannot be
interested in knowing what we do not think of at all.
In what way then do we think of anything before we
know it or appear to know it ? I reply that it is an
object of interrogative or quasi-interrogative consciousness.
It is thought of as being one and only a certain one of a
series or group of alternatives, though which it is we leave
undecided.
Sometimes the question is quite definite. The
alternatives are all separately formulated. Thus we may
ask — Is this triangle right-angled, acute, or obtuse ? In
putting the question we seek for only a certain one of the
three alternatives, but until the answer is found we do
not know which of them we are in search of; we do not
know it although we think of it.
Sometimes the question is only partially definite ; only
some alternatives or perhaps only one of them is
separately formulated. Thus we may ask — Has he gone
to London, or where else ?
Sometimes again, the question is indefinite. What is
sought is merely thought of as belonging to a group or
series of alternatives of a certain kind, which are not
i ERROR 7
separately formulated. Suppose that I am watching the
movements of a bird. My mental attitude is essentially
of the interrogative type even though I shape no definite
question. I am virtually asking, — what will the bird do
next ? The bird may do this, that, or the other, and I
may not formulate the alternatives. But whatever
changes in its position or posture may actually occur, are
for that very reason what I am interested in knowing
before I know them. I am looking for the determinate
while it is as yet undetermined for me. Or, to take an
illustration of a different kind. I have to find the
number which results from multiplying 1947 by 413.
At the outset I do not know what the number is, and yet
there is a sense in which I may be said to think of it.
I think of it determinately as the number which is to be
obtained by a certain process. So far I may be said to
know about it. But the knowledge about it is not
knowledge of what it is. Yet this is what I aim at
knowing, and therefore I must in some sense think of it.
I think of it indeterminately. I think of it as being a
certain one of a series of alternative numbers, which I do
not separately formulate.
So far I have considered only cases in which know-
ledge is sought before it is found, so that the transition
from the indeterminate to the determinate comes as the
answer to a question definite or indefinite. But there are
instances in which this is not so. There are instances
in which the answer seems to forestall the question. A
picture falls while I am writing. I was not previously
thinking of the picture at all, but of something quite
different. My attention is only drawn to the picture
by its fall. But the picture then becomes distinguished
as subject from its fall as predicate. This means that
the picture is thought of as it might have existed for
consciousness before the fall took place. It is regarded
as relatively undetermined and the predicate as a deter-
mination of it. The fall of the picture comes before
consciousness as if it were the answer to a question.1
1 Of course if we suppose that the noise of the fall first awakens
8 G. F. STOUT i
The relation of subject and predicate is essentially
analogous to what it would have been if we had pre-
viously been watching to see what would happen to the
picture.
In this and similar instances, there is an actual dis-
tinction of subject and predicate essentially analogous to
that of question and answer. But in a very large part
of our cognitive experience no such distinction is actually
made. I look, let us say, at my book-shelves, and I am
aware of the books as being on the shelves and of the
shelves as containing the books. But I do not formulate
verbally or otherwise the propositions : — " The books are
on the shelves," or " The shelves contain the books."
Neither the books nor the shelves are regarded as re-
latively indeterminate and as receiving fresh determination
in the fact that one of them stands in a certain relation to
the other. Again, I may meet a friend and begin to talk
to him on some political topic, proceeding on the assump-
tion that he agrees with me. I find that he does not,
and only then do I wake up to the fact that I have been
making an assumption. And it is only at this point that
the distinction of subject and predicate emerges. Such
latent or unformulated presuppositions are constantly
present in our mental life. They are constantly involved
in the putting of questions. They are constantly involved
in the conception of the subjects to which we attach pre-
dicates, and also in the conception of the predicates.
The nature, function, and varieties of this kind of cog-
nitive consciousness we cannot here discuss. It is suffi-
cient for our purpose to note that all such cognitions are
capable of being translated into the subject -predicate
form, without loss or distortion of meaning. Further, this
translation is necessary if we are to submit them to
logical examination. In particular, we cannot otherwise
deal with any question relating to their truth or falsity.
The disjunction, true or false, does not present itself to
the question — What is falling ? before we think of the picture, the fall is subject
and the picture predicate. But I do not think that this account of the matter
always holds good in such cases.
i ERROR 9
consciousness until we distinguish subject and predicate.
In the absence of this distinction there is only uncon-
scious presupposing or assuming. But when the dis-
tinction is made it is essentially analogous to that of
question and answer.
So far as our thought is indeterminate there can be
neither truth nor error. But it must be remembered that
our thought is never purely indeterminate. A question
always limits the range of alternatives within which its
answer is sought ; and the question itself may be infected
with error. A man for instance may set out to find the
square root of two. In the formulation of the question
he leaves it undetermined what special numerical value
the root of two has. But he assumes that it has some
determinate numerical value. To this extent his question
is infected with error, and it can have no real answer
unless it is reshaped. If he seems to himself to find an
answer, he does but commit a further error. What he
thinks he wants to know, is not what he really wants to
know. Hence in finding what he really wants to know
he must alter the form of his question.
This leads me to make a suggestion in terminology.
The term ' content of thought' is perpetually being used
with perplexing vagueness. I propose to restrict its
application. We cannot, without doing violence to
language, say that the indeterminate, as such, is part of
the content of thought. For it is precisely what the
thought does not contain, but only intends to contain.
On the contrary, we can say with perfect propriety that it
belongs to the intent of the thought. It is what the
conscious subject intends when its selective interest
singles out this or that object.
From this point of view we can deal advantageously
with a number of logical and epistemological problems.
For instance it throws light on the proposed division of
propositions into analytic and synthetic. Whatever can
be regarded as a judgment, whether expressed in words
or not, is and must be both analytic and synthetic. It is
synthetic as regards content and analytic as regards intent.
io G. F. STOUT i
While I am watching a bird, whatever movement it may-
make next belongs to the intent of my thought, even before
it occurs. It is what I intend to observe. But the special
change of posture or position does not enter into the con-
tent of my thought until it actually takes place under my
eyes. Hence each step in the process is synthetic as re-
gards content though analytic as regards intent. This holds
generally for all predication which is not mere tautology.
If the predicate did not belong to the intent of its subject,
there would be nothing to connect it with this special
subject rather than with any other. If it already formed
part of the content there would be no advance and there-
fore no predication at all.
From the same point of view, we may regard error as
being directly or indirectly a discrepancy between the
intent and content of cognitive consciousness.
Sometimes the discrepancy lies in a latent assumption.
The initial question which determines the intent of thought
may itself be infected with error, as in the example of a
man setting out to find the square root of two. In such
cases it would seem that a man cannot reach truth
unless he finds something which he does not seek.
But the reason is that there is already a discrepancy
between intent and content in the very formulation
of his initial question. The man is interested in
formulating an answerable question, and he fails to
do so. Similarly wherever error occurs there is always
an express or implied discrepancy between intent and
content.
It follows that truth and error are essentially relative
to the interest of the subject. To put a question seriously
is to want to know the answer. A person cannot be right
or wrong without reference to some interest or purpose.
A man wanders about a town which is quite unfamiliar
without any definite aim except to pass the time. Just
in so far as he has no definite aim he cannot go astray.
He is equally right whether he takes a turn which leads
to the market-place or one which leads to the park. If
he wants to amuse himself by sight-seeing it may be a
i ERROR 1 1
mistake for him to go in this direction rather than in that.
But if he does not care for sight-seeing, he cannot commit
this error. On the other hand if his business demands
that he should reach the market-place by a certain time,
it may be a definite blunder for him to take the turn
which leads to the park. In this example the interest is
primarily practical and the blunder is a practical blunder.
But the same principle holds good for all rightness and
wrongness even in matters which appear purely theoretical.
Our thought can be true or false only in relation to the
object which we mean or intend. And we mean or
intend that object because we are, from whatever motive,
interested in it rather than in other things. If a man
says that the sun rises and sets, he may refer only to the
behaviour of the visible appearance of the sun, as seen
from the earth's surface. In that case you do not convict
him of error when you remind him that it is the earth
which moves and not the sun. For you are referring to
something in which he was not interested when he made
the statement. Error is defeat. We mean to do one
thing and we actually do another. So far as the error is
merely theoretical what we mean to do is to think of a
certain thing as it is, and what we actually do is to think
of it as it is not.
This implies that the thing we think of has a constitu-
tion of its own independent of our thinking — a constitution
to which our thinking may or may not conform. A
question is only possible on the assumption that it has
an answer predetermined by the nature of the object of
inquiry. It is this feature which marks off the interroga-
tive consciousness peculiar to cognitive process from the
form of indeterminate thinking which is found in the play
of fancy. While the play of fancy is proceeding, its
object is at any moment only partially determined in
consciousness, and each step in advance consists in fixing
on one alternative to the exclusion of others. But the
intent of imaginative thinking is different from that of
cognitive, and consequently the decision between com-
peting alternatives is otherwise made. An examination
12 G. F. STOUT i
of this difference will carry us a step farther in our
inquiry.
III. Imaginative and Cognitive Process
& 3. Imaginary objects as such are creatures of our own
making. When we make up a fairy-tale for a child the
resulting object of consciousness is merely the work of
the mind, and it is not taken by us for anything else.
In the development of intent into content, of indeterminate
into determinate thinking, the decision among alternatives
is made merely as we please, whatever be our motive.
It depends purely on subjective selection so far as the
process is imaginative.
It is necessary to add this saving clause. For no
imaginative process is merely imaginative. Even in the
wildest play of fancy, the range of subjective selection is
restricted by limiting conditions. Gnomes must not be
made to fly, or giants to live in flower-cups. Thackeray's
freedom of selection in composing Vanity Fair was
circumscribed by his purpose of giving a faithful repre-
sentation of certain phases of human life. In so far as
such limiting conditions operate, the mental attitude is
not merely imaginative. It is imaginative only in so far
as the limiting conditions still leave open a free field for
the loose play of subjective selection.
This freedom of subjective selection is absent in
cognitive process. Instead of deciding between alterna-
tives according to his own good pleasure, the conscious
subject seeks to have a decision imposed upon him
independently of his wish or will. It is true that
cognitive process may include a varied play of sub-
jective selection. But there is one thing which must
not be determined by subjective selection. It is the
deciding which among a group of alternative qualifica-
tions is to be ascribed to the object we are interested
in knowing.
In cognitive process as such we are active merely in
order that we may be passive. Our activity is successful
i ERROR 13
only in so far as its result is determined for us and not
by us.
In this sense we may say that the work of the mind
when its interest is cognitive has an experimental character.
What is ordinarily called an experiment is a typical case
of this mental attitude. A chemist applies a test to a
substance. The application of the test is his own doing.
But the result does not depend on him : he must simply
await it. Yet he was active only in order to obtain this
result. He was active that he might enable himself to
be passive. He was active in order to give the object an
opportunity of manifesting its own independent nature.
His activity essentially consists in the shaping of a
question so as to wrest an answer from the object of
inquiry. In all cognitive process the mental attitude is
essentially analogous. Suppose that I am interested in
knowing whether any number of terms in the series
1 + 1 -j_ i- _|_ 1 etc., have for their sum the number 2. I
may proceed by actually adding. This is a mental
experiment, but it turns out to be unsuccessful. It
does not transform my initial question into a shape in
which it wrests its own answer from its object. By
adding any given number of terms I find that the sum is
less than two. But the doubt always remains whether
by taking more terms I may not reach a different result.
Under this mode of treatment my object refuses to mani-
fest its nature so as to answer my question. I fail to
obtain an answer by waiting for data which I have not
got — by waiting till some number of terms shall present
itself having 2 for their sum. Accordingly I re-
sort to another form of experiment. I appeal to ex-
perience a priori, instead of experience a posteriori.
Instead of looking for data which I have not got, I try
to obtain an answer by manipulating the data which I
already possess in the very conception of the series as
such, and of the number 2. I fix attention on the form
of serial transition, and I inquire whether this is capable
of yielding a term such as will make 2 when it is
added to the sum of preceding terms. I find that
i4 G. F. STOUT i
such a term must be equal to the term that precedes
it, and that according to the law of the series each
term is the half of that which precedes it. Hence
no number of terms can have 2 as their sum. My
experiment is successful. It translates my question
into a shape in which it compels an answer from its
object.
Suppose again that I am verifying the statement that
two straight lines cannot enclose a space. I conceive
two lines as straight, ignoring all else but their being
lines and their being straight. I then consider the
varying changes of relative position of which they are
capable, and I find by trial that only certain general
kinds of variation are possible. If I think of them as
not meeting at all, they refuse to enclose a space. The
same is true when they are thought of as meeting at one
point only. But if they meet at more than one point
they insist on coinciding at all points. This result of my
experiment does not depend on my activity ; it is deter-
mined for me by the nature of the object on which I
operate, by the constitution of space and of straight
lines.
It will be seen that I have included under the term
experiment two very different groups of cases. To the
first group belong such instances as the application of a
chemical test. Their distinctive character is that an
answer to the question raised cannot be obtained merely
by operating on the data which are already presupposed
in putting the question itself. When I am watching to
see what a bird will do next, the decision does not come
merely from a consideration of what I already know
about the bird. The decision is given by a posteriori
experience. On the other hand, if I want to know
whether two straight lines can enclose a space I need no
data except lines, straightness, and space as such. I can
shape my question by mentally operating on these data
so that it answers itself. The decision is given by a
priori experience. But both results obtained a priori and
those obtained a posteriori are equally due to an experi-
i ERROR 1 5
mental process, to an activity that exists in order that it
may be determined by its object.
IV. Mere Appearance and Reality
8 4. All error consists in taking for real what is mere
appearance. In order to solve the problem of error we
must therefore discover the meaning of this distinction
between mere appearance and reality. We are now in a
position to take this step. We have a clue in the
foregoing discussion of the nature of the imaginary object
as such. The imaginary object as such is unreal and we
see quite clearly wherein its unreality consists. It is
unreal inasmuch as its imaginary features as such have
no being independently of the psychical process by which
they come to be presented to the individual consciousness.
They are merely the work of the mind, merely the product
of subjective selection and they are therefore mere
appearances. But though they are mere appearances,
they are not therefore illusory or deceptive. They are
not deceptive, because they are not taken for real.
While the purely imaginative attitude is maintained,
they are not taken either for real or unreal. The question
does not arise, because in imagination as such we are not
interested in the constitution of an object as independent
of the process by which we come to apprehend it.1 On
the other hand when the question is raised whether what
we merely imagine has this independent being, we commit
no error if we refuse to affirm that it has. Mere appear-
ance is not error so long as we abstain from confusing it
with reality.
The imaginary object is only one case of mere appear-
ance. It is the case in which the nature of what is
presented to consciousness is determined merely by the
psychical process of subjective selection. But there is
always mere appearance when and so far as the nature of
1 The fact that the object is merely imaginary is not attended to. We do not
contrast it as unreal with something else as real. If we are externally reminded
of its unreality, the flow of fancy is disturbed. The flow of fancy is also disturbed
if we are called on to believe that our fancies are facts. The whole question of
reality or unreality is foreign to the imaginative attitude.
1 6 G. F. STOUT i
a presented object is determined merely by the psycho-
logical conditions of its presentation, whatever these may
be. There is always mere appearance when and so far
as a presented object has features due merely to the
special conditions of the flow of individual consciousness
as one particular existence among others, connected with
a particular organism and affected by varying circum-
stances of time and place.
In ordinary sense-perception the thing perceived is
constantly presented under modifications due to the
varying conditions of the perceptual process. But what
we are interested in knowing is the thing so far as it has
a constitution of its own independent of these conditions.
Hence whatever qualifications of the object are recognised
as having their source merely in the conditions of its
presentation are pro tanto contrasted with its reality as
being merely its appearances.
An object looked at through a microscope is presented
as much larger and as containing far more detail than when
seen by the naked eye. But the thing itself remains the
same size and contains just the same amount and kind of
detail. The difference is due merely to conditions affect-
ing the process of perception, and it is therefore merely
apparent. On the other hand, the details which become
visible when we use the microscope, and which were
previously invisible, are ascribed to the real object. The
parts of the object being viewed under uniform perceptual
conditions, whatever differences are presented must be due
to it, and not to the conditions of its presentation. The
visible extension of a surface increases or diminishes
according as I approach or recede from it, and the visible
configuration of things varies according to the point of
view from which I look at them. But these changes
being merely due to the varying position of my body
and its parts are regarded as mere appearances so far
as they are noted at all.1 If I close my eyes or look
1 To a large extent they pass unnoted. We have acquired the habit of
ignoring them. So far as this is the case, they are not apprehended as appear-
ances of the thing perceived.
i ERROR 17
away, objects, previously seen, disappear from view. But
this being due merely to the closing of my eyes or my
turning them in another direction is no real change in
the things. They are really just as they would have been
if I had continued to look at them.
It is important to notice that in cases of this kind the
mere appearance is not to be identified with any actual
sense-presentation. The appearance is due to a certain
interpretation of the sensible content of perception,
suggested by previous experience. When we see a stick
partially immersed in a pool, the visual presentation
is such as to suggest a bend in the stick itself. Even
while we are denying that the stick itself is bent, we are
thinking of a bend in it. Otherwise the act of denial
would be impossible. This being understood, it is easy
to see that all cases of mere appearance are in principle
analogous to the examples drawn from sense-perception.
Mere appearance exists wherever anything is thought of
as having a character which does not belong to it inde-
pendently of the psychical process by which it is appre-
hended. Unless this character is affirmed of its inde-
pendent reality, there is no error. If a man denies that
two lines are commensurable, or if he questions whether
they are so or not, their commensurableness must have
been suggested to his mind. If the lines are really
incommensurable, this suggestion is mere appearance.
Should he affirm them to be commensurable he is in
error.
We now pass to two important points of principle.
In the first place it should be clearly understood that
mere appearance is a qualification of the object appre-
hended and not of the mind which apprehends it. There
is here a complication due to an ambiguity in the term,
appearance. It may mean either the presenting of a
certain appearance or the appearance presented. The last"
sense is that in which I have hitherto used the word in
speaking of mere appearance. A stick, partly immersed
in a pool, appears bent in the sense that it presents the
appearance of being bent. The bend is the appearance
C
1 8 G. F. STOUT i
presented. Now the presenting of this appearance is an
adjective of the stick as an independent reality. The
stick which is really straight really presents the appearance
of being bent. It does not merely appear to appear
bent : it really appears so. Given the psychological and
psychophysical conditions of its presentation, it is part of
its independently real nature that it should wear this
appearance. But the apparent bend is not a qualifica-
tion of the independently real stick. It is a qualification
of a total object constituted by the real stick so far as it
is present to consciousness and also by certain other
presented features which are due merely to the special
conditions under which the real stick is apprehended.
Mere appearance is in no sense an adjective of the cogni-
tive subject. The person to whom a straight staff appears
as bent when it is partially dipped in a pool is not himself
apparently bent on that account, either bodily or mentally.
He who imagines a golden mountain is not himself the
appearance of a golden mountain : his psychical processes
are not apparently golden or mountainous. The existence
of mere appearance is not that of a psychical fact or event
except in the special case where the real object thought
of happens to be itself of a psychical nature.
In the second place, the distinction between mere
appearance and reality is relative to the special object we
are interested in. In ordinary sense-perception we are
interested in the objects perceived so far as they have a
constitution independent of the variable conditions bodily
and mental of the perceptual process. Contrast this with
the special case of a beginner learning to draw from
models. For him what in ordinary sense-perception is
mere appearance becomes the reality. He has to repro-
duce merely what the object looks like from the point of
view at which he sees it. And he finds this a hard task.
The visual presentation is apt to be apprehended by him
as having qualifications which do not belong to its own
independent constitution, but are merely due to the
conditions of his own psychical processes in relation to it.
His established habit of attending only to physical
i ERROR 19
magnitude and configuration leads him to think of
physical fact even in attempting to think only of the
sensory presentation. Thus a child in drawing the profile
of a face will put in two eyes. But the physical fact so
far as it is unseen does not belong to the reality of the
visual presentation. It is therefore mere appearance
relatively to this reality, and in so far as it is confused
with this reality, it is not only mere appearance but error.
V. Special Conditions of Error
8 5. Having defined what we mean by mere appear-
ance we have now only one more step to take in order to
account for error. We have to show how the mere appear-
ance of anything comes to be confused with its reality.
It is clear from the previous discussion that there can
be neither truth nor falsehood except in so far as the
mind is dealing with an object which has a constitution
predetermined independently of the psychical process
by which it is cognised.
Such logical puzzles as the Litigiosus and Crocodilus
involve an attempt to affirm or deny something which
is not really predetermined independently of the affirma-
tion or denial of it. In the Litigiosus the judgment to
be formed is supposed to be part of the reality to which
thought must adjust itself in forming it. Euathlus was
a pupil of Protagoras in Rhetoric. He paid half the fee
demanded by his teacher before receiving lessons and
agreed to pay the remainder after his first lawsuit if
he won it. His first lawsuit was one in which Protagoras
sued him for the money. The jury found themselves in
what appeared a hopeless perplexity. It seemed as if
they could not affirm either side to be in the right without
putting that side in the wrong. The difficulty arose from
the attempt to conform their decision to a determination
of the real which had no existence independently of the
decision itself. Apart from the judgment which they
were endeavouring to form, the reality was indeterminate
and it could not therefore determine their thought in the
20 G. F. STOUT i
process of judging. The Crocodilus illustrates the same
principle in a different way. A crocodile had seized a
child, but promised the mother that if she told him truly
whether or not he was going to give it back, he would
restore it. There would be no difficulty here if the
mother's guess were supposed to refer to an intention
which the crocodile had already formed. But he is
assumed to hold himself free to regulate his conduct
according to what she may happen to say, and so to
falsify her statement at will. There is therefore no
predetermined reality to which her thought can conform
or fail to conform ; which alternative is real, is not pre-
determined independently of her own affirmation of one
of them. Hence an essential condition of either true or
false judgment is wanting. One consequence of the
general principle is that a proposition cannot contain any
statement concerning its own truth or falsity. Before the
proposition is made in one sense or another its own
truth or falsity is not a predetermined fact to which
thought can adjust itself. Thus if a man says, " The
statement I am now making is false," he is not making
a statement at all. On the other hand, he would be
speaking significantly and truly if he said " The statement
I am now making contains nine words." For he can
count each word after determining to use it. His pre-
cedent determination to use the word is an independent
fact which he does not make in the act of affirming it.
For error to exist the mind must work in such a way
as to defeat its own purpose. Its interest must lie in
conforming its thought to the predetermined constitution
of some real object. It must be endeavouring to think
of this as it is independently of the psychological
conditions of the thinking process itself. And yet, in the
very attempt to do so, it must qualify its object by
features which are merely due to such psychological
conditions.
I cannot pretend to give anything approaching a full
analysis of the various special circumstances which give
rise to this confusion of appearance and reality. But
i ERROR 21
the following indication will serve to illustrate the general
principle involved.
Errors may be roughly classified under two heads
which we may designate (i) as errors of confusion,
and (2) as errors of ignorance, inadvertence, and forget-
fulness. All errors involve a confusion of appearance
and reality. But this confusion is the error itself, not
a condition determining its occurrence. When we speak
of an error of confusion, we mean an error which not
only is a confusion, but has its source in a confusion.
Again, all errors involve some ignorance, inadvertence,
or forgetfulness. Whenever any one makes a mistake,
there is something unknown or unheeded which would
have saved him from error if he had known and taken
account of it. But we can distinguish between cases in
which ignorance or inadvertence or forgetfulness are the
sole or the main source of the erroneousness of a belief,
and those in which another and a positive condition plays
a prominent part. This other positive condition is what
I call confusion. I shall begin by explaining wherein
it consists, and illustrate it by typical examples.
(1) Errors of Confusion
§ 6. There is a confusion wherever our cognitive judg-
ment is determined by something else than the precise
object which we are interested in knowing. We mean to
wrest a decision from just this object concerning which the
question is raised ; but owing to psychological conditions,
other factors intervene without our noticing their opera-
tion and determine, or contribute to determine, our
thought. Optical illusions supply many examples. I
must content myself with one very simple illustration
of this kind.
a c d b e g h /
In the above figure there are two straight lines, a b
and e f\ the part c d is marked off on a b, and the
22 G. F. STOUT i
part g h on e f. c d is really equal to g h. But
most persons on a cursory glance would judge it to be
longer. The reason is that though we mean to compare
only the absolute length of c d with the absolute length
of g /i, yet without our knowing it, other factors help
to determine the result. These are the relative length
of c d as compared with a by and the relative length
of g h as compared with e f. This example is typical.
In all such instances we mean our judgment to depend
on comparison of two magnitudes as presented to the
eye. But these magnitudes are presented in more or
less intimate union with other items so as to form with
these a group which the attention naturally apprehends
as a whole. Hence there is a difficulty in mentally
isolating the magnitudes themselves from the contexts
in which they occur so as to compare these magnitudes
only. We seek to be determined by the nature of the
object which we are interested in knowing, but we escape
our own notice in being determined by something else.
This is confusion.
Another most prolific source of confusion is found in
pre -formed association. All associations are in them-
selves facts of the individual mind and not attributes of
anything else. If the idea of smoke always calls up in
my mind the idea of fire as its source, this is something
which is true of me, and not of the fire or the smoke as
independent realities. It might seem from this that
whenever our judgment of truth and falsehood is deter-
mined by association, we commit a confusion. But this
is not so ; for it is the function of association to record
the results of past experience ; and when the results
recorded are strictly relevant to the object we are
interested in knowing, and to the special question at
issue, there is no confusion.
The association between 12x12 and equality to
144 registers the result of previous multiplication of 12
by 1 2. There is therefore no confusion in allowing it
to determine our cognitive judgment. But the associative
mechanism may become deranged so that 12x12 calls
i ERROR 23
up 154 instead of 144. In that case to rely on it as a
record involves an error of confusion.
It often happens that certain connections of ideas
are insistently and persistently obtruded on consciousness
owing to associations which have not been formed
through experiences relevant to the question at issue.
So long and so far as their irrelevance is unknown or
unheeded, the irrelevant association determines the course
of our thought in the same way as the relevant. Take
by way of illustration an argument recently used by an
earth-flattener. The earth must be flat ; otherwise the
water in the Suez Canal would flow out at both ends.
The associations operative in this case, are those due to
experience of spherical bodies situated on the earth's
surface. Whenever the earth-flattener thinks of the
earth as a globe, inveterate custom drives him to think
of it as he has been used to think of all the other globes,
of which he has had experience. But the question at
issue relates to the earth as distinguished from bodies
on its surface. Hence a fallacy of confusion.
One effect of repeated advertisements such as those of
Beecham's pills, covering several columns of a newspaper,
is to produce this kind of illusion. Self-praise is no
recommendation. But self-praise skilfully and obtrusively
reiterated may suffice to produce an association of ideas
which influences belief.1
Errors due to ambiguity of words come under this
head. A word is associated with diverse though allied
meanings, and, as we go on using it in what aims at being
continuous thought, one meaning insensibly substitutes
itself for another. Being unaware of the shifting of our
object from A to A' we go on assuming that what we
have found to be true of A is true of A'. We begin for
instance by talking of opponents of government, meaning
1 Many persons have a prejudice against advertisements. I share this
prejudice myself. And yet the obtrusive vividness and persistent reiteration of
some of them does now and then produce in me a momentary tendency to believe
which might easily become an actual belief if I were not on my guard. Allitera-
tive and rhetorical contrast often help to stamp in the association. " Pink pills
for pale people " is a good instance. Of course the whole effect of advertisement
cannot be explained in this way.
24 G. F. STOUT i
advocates of anarchy, and we proceed to apply what
we have said of these to opponents of some existing
government.
" Bias " is a source of confusion distinct from irrelevant
association, though the two frequently co-operate to
produce error. Bias exists so far as there is a tendency
to accept one answer to a question rather than another
because this answer obtrudes itself on consciousness
through its connection with the emotions, sentiments,
desires, etc. of the subject or in one word, because it
is specially interesting. The interest is most frequently
agreeable. But it may also be disagreeable. In return-
ing home after the discovery of the famous footprint,
Robinson Crusoe's terror caused him to mistake every
bush and tree, and to fancy every stump at a distance
to be a man. To say that a man's mind is intensely
occupied in escaping or guarding against danger, is
equivalent to saying that he is intensely interested in
finding out what the danger is and where it lies. Hence
he will be on the alert for signs and indications of peril.
He will therefore attend to features of his environment
which would otherwise have passed unnoted, and he
will neglect others which he would otherwise have
attended to. Thus fear may influence belief by determin-
ing what data are, or are not, taken into account. By
excluding relevant data it may give rise to error of
inadvertence. But besides this the data which fear
selects are also emphasised by it. They obtrude them-
selves with an insistent vivacity proportioned to the
intensity of the emotion. This insistent vivacity directly
contributes to determine belief and becomes a source of
error of confusion. In view of current statements this
last point needs to be argued.
The prevailing view appears to be that errors due to
bias are merely errors of inadvertence. Dr. Ward, for
example, strongly takes up this position. " Emotion and
desire," he remarks, " are frequent indirect causes of
subjective certainty, in so far as they determine the
constituents of consciousness at the moment — pack the
i ERROR 25
jury or suborn the witnesses as it were. But the ground
of certainty is in all cases some quality or some relation
of these presentations inter se. In a sense, therefore, the
ground of all certainty is objective — in the sense, that
is, of being something at least directly and immediately
determined for the subject and not by him." *
What Ward's argument really proves is that subjective
bias cannot be recognised by the subject himself as a
ground or reason for believing. It does not follow that
it may not directly influence belief through confusion.
In cases of confusion we seek control proceeding from the
nature of our object, and we find our thought determined
by something else which we fail to distinguish from the
objective control we are in search of. Now there seems
to be no reason why subjective interest should not, in this
way, mask itself as objective control. Connection with
emotion and desire may give to certain ideas a persistent
obtrusiveness which is not always adequately traced to its
source. But this persistent obtrusiveness, when and so far
as it is not traced to its source in emotion and desire, must
appear as if it arose from the nature of the object. It
will thus appear to the subject as something which
determines him and is not determined by him. This
confusion may assume three forms. In the first place
there are instances in which it is very difficult to dis-
cover any other cause of belief except subjective bias.
The person who holds the belief cannot assign any reason
for it except that he feels it to be true. Sometimes, no
doubt, there may be in such cases an objective ground
which the believer finds it impossible to express or
indicate to others. But there are instances in which the
sole or the main factor seems to be subjective bias.
What is believed obtrudes itself upon consciousness vividly
and persistently because of its peculiar kind and degree
of interest so that it is difficult to frame the idea of
alternative possibilities save in a comparatively faint,
imperfect, and intermittent way.
The second class of cases is less problematical. I refer
1 Article on " Psychology," in Ency. Brit. p. 83.
26 G. F. STOUT i
to instances in which there are relevant reasons for belief
but reasons which are inadequate to account for the actual
degree of assurance, apart from the co-operation of bias.
A regards B with hatred and jealousy so that the mere
imagination of B's disgrace or ruin has a fascination for
him. Something occurs which would produce in an
impartial person a suspicion that B had been behaving in
a disgraceful way. A at once believes the worst with
unwavering decision and tenacity. It may be that the
impartial person, who only entertains a suspicion, has just
as restricted a view of the evidence as A. The restriction
may be due to ignorance or indifference in his case, and
mental preoccupation in A's. But for both the relevant
evidence may be virtually the same. The difference is
that in A's mind it is reinforced and sustained by
subjective bias which he does not sufficiently allow for.
In a third class of instances irrelevant association co-
operates with subjective bias. This is perhaps the most
fertile source of superstitions and of those savage beliefs
of which superstitions are survivals. Take for example
the tendency which some uneducated persons and even
some who are educated find irresistible, to think of their
bodies as still sentient after death. Sit tibi terra levis
is more than a metaphor. It points back to the belief
that the weight of the superincumbent earth actually
distresses the corpse. It is a Mahometan superstition
that the believing dead suffer when the unhallowed foot of
a Christian treads on their graves. In the old Norse
legends to lay hands on the treasure hidden in the tomb
of a chief is to run a serious risk of rousing its owner from
his long sleep to defend his possessions. Perhaps there
are few people who look forward to their own funeral
without figuring themselves to be present at it not only
in body but in mind. This whole point of view is in part
due to a firmly established association arising from the
intimate connection of mind and body during life. But
besides this we must also take into account the gruesome
fascination of such ideas. Their vivid and absorbing
interest makes it difficult to get rid of them, and this
i ERROR 27
persistent obtrusiveness in so far as it is not traced to its
source in psychological conditions contributes to
determine belief in their reality.
(2) Errors of Ignorance and Inadvertence
We turn now from the error of confusion to the error
of mere ignorance, which must be taken to include all
forgetfulness or inadvertence. As I have before pointed
out, all error involves some ignorance or inadvertence ;
but in the case of confusion there is also some other
positive ground of the erroneousness of the belief. An
irrelevant condition operates as if it were relevant. It
would not do so, if we were fully and persistently aware of
its presence and influence, and to this extent the error of
confusion is one of ignorance or inadvertence ; but the
ignorance and inadvertence is not the sole cause of error.
There is also the undetected influence of the irrelevant
factor determining the course of thought. In the error
of mere ignorance or inadvertence, on the other hand, the
sole ground of the erroneousness of the belief lies in the
insufficiency of the data, at the time when it is formed.
But here we must guard against a misapprehension. The
error is not identical with the ignorance or inadvertence.
It is a belief having a positive content of its own. Nor
is it correct to say even that the determining cause of
this belief lies in the ignorance or inadvertence. Mere
negation or privation cannot be the sole ground of any
positive result. What directly determines belief is the
data which are presented, not anything which is un-
presented, and we must add to these as another
positive condition the urgency of the interest which
demands a decision and will not permit of a suspense of
judgment. It is these factors which are operative in
producing the belief. Ignorance and inadvertence
account only for its erroneousness. In all cognitive
process we seek to be determined by the nature of our
object. But if the object is only partially known, what is
unknown may be relevant so that if it had been known
28 G. F. STOUT i
and heeded another decision would have been imposed
on us.
As an example of error due to mere ignorance, I may
refer to a personal experience of my own. Some time
ago I set out to visit a friend who, as I assumed, was
living in Furnival's Inn. I found on arrival that the
whole building had been pulled down. My error in this
case was not due to any confusion. The evidence on
which I was relying was all relevant and such as I still
continue to trust on similar occasions. I went wrong
simply because certain events had been occurring since
my previous visit to Furnival's Inn without my knowing
of them.
Inadvertence is not sharply divided from mere
ignorance. It includes all failure to bring to conscious-
ness knowledge, already acquired and capable of recall, at
the time when it is required for determining our decision.
It may also be taken to include other failures to take into
account knowledge which would have been immediately
and easily accessible if we had turned our attention in the
right direction. Mill gives many examples under the
head " Fallacies of Non-observation." From him I quote
the following : — " John Wesley, while he commemorates
the triumph of sulphur and supplication over his bodily
infirmities, forgets to appreciate the resuscitating influence
of four months' repose from his apostolic labours."
Wesley knew that he had taken rest and also that rest
has commonly a recuperative effect in such cases. His
failure lay in omitting to take these facts into account
owing to subjective bias, as an amateur physician with
crochets and as a religious enthusiast.
So far as error is traceable to ignorance or inadvertence,
it is perhaps abstractedly possible to conceive that it
might have been avoided by an absolute suspense of
judgment. I might have refused to count on the con-
tinued existence of Furnival's Inn, or even on the chance
of it, on the ground that I did not know all that had
happened in relation to it, since I saw it last. But such
suspense of judgment cannot be uncompromisingly main-
i ERROR 29
tained as a general attitude throughout our whole mental
life. It would be equivalent to a refusal to live at all.
Any one who carried out the principle consistently would
not say " this is a chair " when he saw one. He would
rather say, "This is what, if my memory serves me right,
I am accustomed to regard as the visual appearance of a
chair." In thus cutting off the chance of error we should
at the same time cut off the chance of truth. In order
to advance either in theory or practice, we must presume —
bet on our partial knowledge. We must take the risk
due to an unexplored remainder of conditions which may
be relevant to the issue we have to decide on. But there
is another alternative. A mental attitude is possible
intermediate between absolute suspense of judgment and
undoubting acceptance of a proposition as true. We
may judge that the balance of evidence is in favour of
the proposition. Instead of unreservedly expecting to
find Furnival's Inn, I might have said to myself that it
was a hundred to one I should find it. So far as this
proposition has a practical significance as a guide to
action it can only mean that I should be right in relying
on similar evidence in 99 cases out of 100. But such an
attitude does not really evade the possibility of error
arising from ignorance and inadvertence. For (1) we are
liable to go wrong even in the estimate of probabilities.
There are, for example, vulgar errors of this kind which
mathematical theory corrects. (2) In determining the
probability of this or that proposition, we proceed on the
basis of a preformed body of beliefs which are themselves
liable to be erroneous. In particular, we are apt to
assume undoubtingly that our view of competing alterna-
tive is virtually exhaustive, when it is really not so. But
we cannot be always sifting these latent presuppositions to
the bottom. If we constantly endeavoured to do so in a
thorough-going way, it would be impossible to meet the
emergencies of practical life or even to make effective
progress in knowledge. It is a psychological impossibility
to assume and maintain a dubitative attitude at every
point where ignorance or inadvertence are capable of
30 G. F. STOUT i
leading us astray. We have not time for this, and in
any case the complexity and difficulty of the task
would baffle our most strenuous efforts. (3) Continued
attention to the possibility of a judgment being
wrong would for the most part hamper us in the
use of it. In believing, we commit ourselves to act on
our belief, to adapt our conduct and our thought
to what is believed as being real. In so doing we must
more and more tend to drop demurrers and reservations.
I cannot every time I return to my house after absence
keep steadily before my mind that it may have been
burnt down without my knowing it. When we have
committed ourselves to a belief so as to conform our
thought and conduct to it, it becomes more and more
interwoven with the whole system of our mental life.
Our interest in its consequences and implications diverts
attention from considerations which point to its possible
or probable erroneousness and at the same time this same
interest forms a subjective bias of growing strength which
is likely to lead to an error of confusion.
Absolute suspense of judgment, as we have defined it,
would exclude even a judgment of relative probability.
There is, however, a different meaning which attaches in
ordinary language to the phrase " absolute " or " complete "
suspense of judgment. It is frequently taken to mean
that the balance of probability for and against a proposi-
tion is regarded as even. This kind of suspense does not
prevent us from acting as if the proposition were true or
false. But neither does it exclude error. For the
judgment that probabilities are equally balanced is itself
liable to error, like other judgments of probability.
Besides this, such a judgment is not by itself sufficient to
determine action. It must be supplemented by other
beliefs of a more positive kind, and in regard to these the
possibility of error again emerges. A man may regard it
as an even chance whether a certain operation will kill or
cure him. He may, none the less, decide to undergo it,
so that his practical decision is the same as if he had no
doubt of a favourable result. But the practical decision
i ERROR 31
is founded on another belief, the belief that the advantage
of a favourable issue is greater than the disadvantage of
an unfavourable issue. Again a general may think the
chances even, of the enemy coming this way or that to
attack him. Merely on this basis he could not in-
telligently make provision for one contingency in
preference to the other. In order that he may do so, he
must be influenced by other beliefs of a more determinate
kind. He may, for instance, believe that if the enemy
comes one way, it is useless to attempt resistance, and
that if he comes the other, the attack can be repelled.
On these assumptions he will proceed as if he un-
doubtingly accepted the second alternative. Our result,
then is — (1) That absolute suspense of judgment excluding
even the judgment of probability is equivalent to suspense
of action. (2) That the relative suspense of judgment
which consists in affirming even chances, does not suffice
to determine action unless it is supplemented by other
beliefs in which one alternative is preferred to others.
Hence it appears that practical decision involves theoretical
decision, and that we must constantly risk error by
presuming on partial knowledge if we are to live at all.
Here we must close this sketch of the special conditions
of error. The topic in itself is almost inexhaustible. But
what has been said may serve to illustrate our general
position.
This position is simply that error is a special case of
mere appearance. It is mere appearance which also
appears to be real. The essence of all mere appearance
is that it is a feature of an object which belongs to it
only in virtue of the psychical conditions under which it is
apprehended. In the case of error the psychical con-
ditions so operate that mere appearance is not recognised
as such, but is on the contrary presented as if it were real.
VI. No Error is Pure Error
§ 7. The rest of this essay will be occupied with some
corollaries which flow from our general position.
32 G. F. STOUT i
One of these is that no error is pure error. However
much we may be deceived, the total object of our thinking
or perceiving consciousness cannot be entirely illusory.
This does not mean that error is only truth in the
making, or that truth can always be obtained by some
adjustment, compromise, combination, or higher synthesis
of diverging views. When I say that error is never pure
error I am not adopting the attitude of the landlord of
' The Rainbow ' in Silas Marner. " Come, come," said the
landlord, " a joke's a joke. We must give and take.
You're both right and you're both wrong as I say. I
agree with Mr. Macey here, as there's two opinions ;
and if mine was asked I should say they're both right.
Tookey's right and Winthrop's right, and they've only got
to split the difference and make themselves even." It is
no such comfortable philosophy that I am advocating.
On the contrary, I admit and maintain that in the
ordinary acceptation of the word a man may be and
frequently is " completely wrong," and also that he may
be and sometimes, though not so frequently, is completely
right. But I would point out that such phrases are used
in ordinary parlance with a certain tacit and unconscious
reservation. " Completely wrong " means completely
wrong so far as relates to the point at issue — to the
question which alone possesses interest for the parties
concerned. If a man meets me some morning and tells
me, in good faith, that Balliol College has been burned
down during the night, I say, with justice, that he has been
completely deceived, when it turns out that there has been
no fire, and that Balliol College is just as it was. If my
informant were to defend himself from the charge of
complete error by alleging that after all Balliol College
really exists, and that fires really take place, I should call
his answer irrelevant and stupid. Yet the answer would
be true enough, and it would only be stupid because of its
irrelevance. It would be irrelevant because the existence
of Balliol and the occurence of fires were facts taken for
granted as a matter of course. There was never any
question concerning them. When I said that he was
i ERROR 33
entirely deceived, I meant that he was so deceived on the
only point of interest which could lead him to make the
statement at all, or me to listen to it.
Thus in ordinary intercourse we may be completely
right in saying that a man is completely wrong. But
this is possible only because the statement is made with a
tacit and unconscious reservation. It is made with
reference not to the total object present to the mind of
the person who is deceived, but with reference to that
part of it which alone interests us at the moment.
But when we are concerned with the philosophical theory
of error, what is uninteresting in ordinary intercourse
becomes of primary importance. We must consider the
total object, and when we do so, we are compelled to
recognise that some truth is implied in every error. For
otherwise the word " error " loses all meaning.
The unreality of what is unreal lies wholly in its
contrast with what is real. It must be thought of as
qualifying some real being. Its unreality is relative not
to any real being whatever taken at random, but only to
that real being to which it is referred as a character or
attribute.
It is essential to the possibility of error that both the
real being and its unreal qualification must be present to
consciousness. I may imagine an animal and describe it
as imagined. Another person who is acquainted with
some actual animal more or less resembling what I have
imagined may regard my description as referring to this.
From his point of view he may show that parts of my
description are unreal. But he does not convict me of
error unless he can show that I intended to describe the
animal which he has in mind.
It does not follow that the explicit subject of an
erroneous judgment must itself be real and not illusory.
It may be illusory in relation to a more comprehensive
subject, which is real. If I am told that Cleopolis, the
capital of fairy-land, was burnt down last night, I reply
that Cleopolis and fairy - land never had any actual
existence. Here I condemn both subject and predicate
D
34 G. F. STOUT i
as illusory. But in doing so I regard the subject as itself
a predicate of a more comprehensive subject which really
exists. I presuppose a certain kind of reality which I
call actual existence. This consists in a system of things
and events continuously connected in an assignable way
with my own existence at the present moment, and
including what happened last night. When I say that
Cleopolis never actually existed, I deny that it ever
formed a partial feature of this reality.
What has been said of the subject of an erroneous
judgment applies also to the predicate. The predicate
cannot be entirely unreal. This follows from the fact that
the distinction between subject and predicate is relative to
the point of view of the person judging, and fluctuates
accordingly. Whether I say " this horse is black " or
" this black thing is a horse " depends on the point of
departure of my thought and not on the nature of its
object. If I begin by regarding the object as a horse
and then proceed to qualify it as black, " black " is
predicate and horse subject. If I begin thinking of the
object as a black thing and then proceed to qualify it as
being a horse, horse is predicate and " black thing " is
subject.
Considerations of this kind have led some writers to
regard error as ultimately consisting merely in a mis-
placement of predicates. Subject is real and predicate is
real ; we err only in putting them together in the wrong
way. This manner of speaking seems to me misleading so
far as it suggests that the illusory object, as such, having
no positive content of its own, can be resolved without
remainder into constituents which are not illusory but real.
The fallacy lies in the tacit assumption that A as predicate
of B is just the same A as when it is predicated of C, D,
E, etc. This is not so. In predicating A of B we
think of A as related in a specific way to the other
constituents and attributes of A. But this relatedness of
B is as much part of the positive content of our thought
as whatever may be left of B when we abstract from this
relatedness. Besides this, B when it is thought of as
i ERROR 35
existing in these relations is thought of as adjusted to
them and modified accordingly. In Goldsmith's poem of
the mad dog, the people make a mistake in saying that
the man would die.
The man recovered of the bite;
The dog it was that died.
Here it is assumed that the man is real, the dog is real
and the death is real. It would seem therefore that the
error lay merely in a wrong arrangement — in coupling
death with the man instead of with the dog. But in fact
the death of a man is something different in its nature
and implications from the death of a dog, and a man
dying is something different from a dog dying. Perhaps
if the man had died, the world would have lost a church-
warden. But this could not be part of the meaning of
the death of the dog;.
'!=>•
VII. Limits to the Possibility of Error
§ 8. If the essential conditions of error are absent, what
is taken for real must be real. From this point of view
we can prescribe limits to the possibility of error. A
belief cannot be erroneous unless it ascribes to a real
existence, as such, some qualification which does not
belong to it. The real existence must itself be present
to consciousness, and the subject must mean it to be
qualified by the features which are said to be illusory.
Thus, when an illusion is spoken of, we have a right to
inquire what the reality is in relation to which it is an
illusion. We have a right to insist that this reality
must be thought of by the subject who is deceived. We
have also a right to insist that it must be capable of
being conceived without the feature or features which
are said to be illusory. Otherwise there would be a
circle.
Now there are cases in which no such reality is
assignable, and it is consequently meaningless to speak
of error. I believe in the totality of being, and it is
36 G. F. STOUT i
nonsense to say that I may be deceived. For there is
no more comprehensive reality of which the totality of
being can be conceived as a partial feature or aspect.
Whatever point there may be in the ontological argument
for the existence of God lies in this. Again, I believe
that my consciousness exists, and my belief cannot be
illusory. For it cannot be illusory unless I regard my
consciousness as a qualification of some reality which is
not so qualified. Now whatever this reality is supposed
to be, it must be a reality which is present to my con-
sciousness when I commit the error. In other words,
we cannot think of any reality to contrast with illusion
which does not include the very feature that is alleged
to be illusory.
A more interesting illustration is supplied by the
objects of abstract thought.
The object signified by an abstract term is not
regarded as an adjective of anything else. In sub-
stituting for an adjective the corresponding abstract
noun we leave out of count adjectival reference and
treat the object of our thought only as a substantive.
This does not mean that we cease to regard it as an
attribute ; for all abstract objects are essentially attributes
and must be recognised as such. " Adjectival reference "
does not merely consist in being aware that an attribute
is an attribute. The distinctive function of adjectives is
the attribution of an attribute to a thing. Their specific
office is to express the connection of a certain attribute
with whatever other attributes the thing may possess.
Unless the thing is expressly considered as possessing
other attributes, the adjectival reference loses all signifi-
cance. On the contrary, an attribute abstractly con-
sidered is considered by itself: the fact that the things
which it qualifies possess other attributes is regarded as
irrelevant to the purpose of our thought. Things are
referred to only in so far as they may possess the attribute
in which we are interested, to the neglect of their other
features.
The addition of such phrases as qua, or " as such,"
i ERROR 37
to an adjective always annuls the adjectival reference and
substitutes for it the abstract point of view. When I say
" white things," I include in the intent of my thought
whatever other attributes may belong to the things besides
whiteness. Hence in passing from intent to content, I
can affirm that " white things are tangible." When I say
" white things as such, or qua white," I exclude from the
intent of my thought the other attributes of white things,
though I do not of course deny their existence. Hence
I cannot say that " white things as such, or qua white, are
tangible." In like manner, we cannot say that " whiteness
is tangible." For, " whiteness " is equivalent to white
things as such, or qua white.
If this account of the abstract object is correct, such an
object cannot be illusory unless it is internally incoherent.
For illusion exists only if a qualification is ascribed to
something to which it does not belong. But an attribute
abstractly considered is regarded merely as an attribute
of whatever may happen to possess it. Whiteness is
regarded only as an attribute of whatever things are
white. But white things must be white. There is only
one conceivable way in which the abstract object can be
unreal. It may be unreal because by its own intrinsic
nature it is incapable of existing. But this can be the
case only when it is internally incoherent. When it is
internally incoherent, it is illusory, because it contains
illusion within itself, apart from reference to anything
else.1
The concept of a solid figure bounded by twelve squares
is unreal in this manner. For the nature of solid figures,
abstractedly considered, is such as to exclude the qualifica-
tion attributed to it. Similarly any abstract object is
illusory if one of its constituents is thought to be a
possible or necessary qualification of another which it
1 Just as adjectival reference may be annulled by the phrases " as such," or
qua, so abstraction may be annulled by making the abstract object a subject
of a judgment in which it is affirmed to be an attribute of something. For its
connection with other attributes of the thing essentially belongs to the import
of such a judgment. The judgment is possible because the fact of the abstract
object being an attribute is one of its own essential adjectives. When we say
that it is an " attribute of," we merely give this adjective a specific determination.
38 G. F. STOUT i
does not so qualify. I speak only of possible or necessary,
not of actual connection, because the question of actuality
involves an adjectival reference beyond the content of the
abstract object itself. When we say that a solid figure is
not actually bounded by twelve squares, we mean that
nothing actually exists, combining the attributes of a solid
figure and of being bounded by twelve squares. But
this in itself would not make the abstract object illusory :
for in its abstractedness it is not intended as the adjective
of anything else.
Assuming internal coherence it seems clear that the
abstract object cannot be illusory. But is it real ? and if
so in what sense ? I answer that it is real if it is possible to
make a mistake or even to conceive a mistake concerning
it. It is real, if it is an object with which our thought
may agree or disagree. This seems to me the only
relevant use of the term reality in theory of Knowledge,
and more especially in theory of Error.
It may be urged that the truth or error which has an
abstraction for its object is only hypothetical or conditional,
resting in an assumption. Now, it is becoming a custom
with some writers to use such words as " hypothetical " or
" conditional " with perplexing vagueness. In the present
case the meaning seems very obscure. Certainly truth
and falsehood relating to an abstraction presuppose that
it is just this abstract object which we intend and nothing
else. But how can this make the truth or error itself
hypothetical or conditional ? I affirm that the sky is blue
and some one tells me that my statement is hypothetical
because it can only be true or false on the condition that
I really mean the sky and not, let us say, a piece of coal,
or the Christian religion. This is so plainly nonsense
that it seems futile to waste words over it.1
But is not abstract thought unreal, because it takes
something to be self-subsistent which is not so ? I
answer that abstract thought does nothing of the kind.
It neither affirms nor denies the adjectival relations of the
abstract object, but simply attempts to ignore them and
1 This point is further considered below. Cf. p. 45.
i ERROR 39
to deal with whatever is then left to think about. In
some cases, there may, perhaps, be nothing left and the
experiment fails altogether. In others, there may be very
little left and the experiment, though successful, is un-
fruitful. In yet others, the result may be the opening out
of a wide and rich field for thought, and then the experi-
ment is both successful and fruitful.
If we ask why in some cases the experiment proves
fruitful in consequences and in others not so, the answer
must be looked for in the intrinsic nature of the subject-
matter. The essential requisite is a relational system
such that given certain relations others are necessarily
determined without reference to further data. Some
important developments in this direction depend on serial
order. The subject-matter exhibits what Herbart used
to call a Reihen-forin or complex of Reihen-formen. In
ultimate analysis there is serial order wherever the rela-
tion of betweenness or intermediacy (Herbart's Zwischeri)
is found. A number lies between numbers in a numerical
series, a position in space between other positions, a part
or a moment of time between other parts or moments of
time, a musical note of a certain pitch between other
notes higher and lower than it. The more complex and
systematic is this serial connection including serial inter-
connection and correspondence of series, the more wide
and fruitful is the field for abstract thinking.
VIII. Abstract Thinking
8 9. Abstraction may be regarded as a means of
eliminating the conditions of the error of ignorance. By
abstraction we can so select our object that each step of
cognitive process shall proceed merely from the given
data to the exclusion of unexplored conditions so that
the judgment depends purely on experience a priori.
Take such a judgment as 7 + 3=10. Here equality to
10 is and is meant to be something which merely depends
on the nature of 7 and of 3 and on the result of the
process of adding. For this reason the judgment is
40 G. F. STOUT i
called necessary. It does not therefore follow that it
must be true, but only that its truth or falsehood depends
on the known data and on nothing else. Hence, if it is
true, it is necessarily true, and if it is false, it is neces-
sarily false. Only one condition of error is excluded by
abstraction : error will not be due to ignorance and con-
sequent presumption on partial knowledge. None the
less inadvertence and confusion may still lead to mistakes.
But even these sources of illusion may disappear when the
data from which we start are sufficiently simple. Thus,
abstract thinking leads to a large body of knowledge which
may be regarded as certain.
It may be said that abstract thinking plays tricks
with its abstract object. It does not merely fasten on
certain features of the actual world and consider their
intrinsic nature, to the disregard of all else. It transforms
the object of its selective attention and gives it forms and
relations which have not been found in the actual world
and perhaps may never have actual existence. The
process of mathematical definition which is the very life-
blood of the science consists mainly in constructions of
this kind. The perfect fluid or the perfect circle of the
mathematician are typical examples.
At the first blush, it would seem that in such construc-
tions we are leaving the real world for figments of our
own making. But this is not so. All such construction
is in its essential import an experimental activity. In it
we are active only in order that we may be passive. We
operate on the object only in order that we may give it
an opportunity of manifesting its own independent nature.
And the object always is or ought to be some actual
feature of concrete existence. The constructive process
has two main functions. It may either be (i) a means
of fixing and defining the abstract object in its abstract-
ness, or (2) a way of developing its nature. Constructions
of the first kind are merely instruments of selective
attention — vehicles of abstraction. They enable us to
represent the abstract object in such a way that we can
deal with it conveniently and effectively. The conception
i ERROR 41
of a perfect fluid is an excellent example of this procedure.
Fluidity actually exists in the concrete inasmuch as fluid
substances actually exist. But the mathematician cannot
investigate fluidity effectively under the special conditions
of its existence in the particular fluids known to him,
such as water. For all these fluids are only more or less
fluid. They are also more or less viscous, and this intro-
duces a complication which he is unable to disentangle.
To meet this difficulty he frames the conception of a
perfect fluid. In studying the perfect fluid, he investigates
fluidity without reference to the complications arising
from the partial viscosity of known fluids. When the
conception is once formed, the perfect fluid manifests an
independent nature of its own which thought does not
make but finds. And whatever may be found to be true
of it is true of all particular fluids in so far as they are
fluid. It holds good of fluids as such. The body of
judgments thus formed expresses the nature of fluidity,
and fluidity is an actual feature of the concrete world.
Geometrical space is a construction of a similar kind.
The geometer, as such, is interested merely in the nature
of space and spatial configuration. His only reason for
referring to the contents of space is that the conception
of figure involves demarcation of one portion of space
from another by some difference of content. Otherwise,
he has no concern with the particular things which are
extended in space or with the physical conditions of their
existence. Accordingly, he fixes and formulates his
abstract object by framing the conception of a space in
which the distribution of contents is to be limited by
spatial conditions, and these only. This conception enables
him to represent his abstract object in such a way that he
can deal with it effectively, unhampered by irrelevancies.
In the second kind of construction, we develop the
nature of our abstract object. We begin by distinguish-
ing some general feature of the concrete world which is
initially presented to us in certain particular forms. But
as soon as we consider this feature abstractly, we discover
that in its own intrinsic nature it is capable of other
42 G. F. STOUT i
determinations which have not been ascertained to exist
in the concrete. Reality belongs to such constructions
inasmuch as they express the real nature of a real feature
of concrete existence. The determinations which we
ascribe to the abstract object are not figments of our own.
They are so founded in the nature of our object as to be
necessarily possible. But it is only to this extent that
they claim to be real. Geometrical construction furnishes
a familiar example. The term figure, as ordinarily used,
implies demarcation ; it implies the bounding off of one
portion of extension from another by some difference in
the character of the extended contents. Now it may be
doubted * whether in the physical world or in our own
mental imagery extended contents are ever so arranged
that their boundaries form perfectly straight lines, or
exactly equal lines, or perfect circles, or perfect spheres.
None the less these conceptions express the actual nature
of space, and to this extent they have an indisputable
claim to be regarded as real. If we consider the distribu-
tion of the contents of space as conditioned only by the
nature of space, it must be possible for adjoining surfaces
to bound each other so as to form a perfectly straight
line ; and the same holds good for other perfect figures.
To understand this we must note that all demarcated
figure presupposes what we may call undemarcated figure ;
all delineated lines presuppose undelineated lines. A
particle cannot move so as to describe a line unless the
path it is to traverse already exists. In any portion of
solid space there must be any number of undemarcated
surfaces which are perfectly plane, and in each plane there
must be any number of undemarcated lines which are
perfectly straight and of circles which are perfectly
circular.2 The geometrical possibility of demarcated figures
simply consists in the actual existence of corresponding
undemarcated figures. From this point of view, such
geometrical constructions as the perfect circle are neces-
sarily possible. They express the actual nature of space,
1 I do not affirm that the doubt is ultimately justified.
2 Cf. Hallam's Criticism of Locke in his History of European Literature.
, ERROR 43
and are, in this sense, real. But it is only in this sense
that the geometer regards them as real.
It may be said that after all we do not know whether
such demarcated figures as the perfect circle ever actually
exist. I reply that the geometrician does not affirm their
actual existence. What he does affirm as actual is that
constitution of space on which the possibility of these con-
structions is founded. To affirm a possibility is to affirm
that certain conditions A actually exist, have existed, or will
exist, of such a nature that if certain other conditions B
were actualised, something else C would be actualised. B
is hypothetical. C as dependent on B is also hypothetical.
But A is actual ; and apart from A the hypothetical pro-
position would have no meaning. In the present instance,
C is the existence of such demarcated figures as the perfect
circle ; B is the existence of certain physical or psycho-
logical conditions ; A is the actual constitution of space.
It is in A that the geometrician is interested. Further,
his insight in regard to A enables him to understand how
and why, if B were actualised, C must necessarily be
actualised. Owing to the actual nature of space as
cognised by him, C is and is seen to be necessarily
possible. Even where the connection of antecedent and
consequent lacks this intelligible transparency, it still
remains true that every valid hypothetical proposition
expresses the actual nature of some specific reality. If
certain conditions are fulfilled, this acorn will grow into
an oak. This means that the actual acorn as I hold it
in my hand is actually constituted in a certain manner.
Similarly, the full import of any hypothetical proposition
can only be expressed by translating it into a corre-
spondingly specific categorical proposition.
As a last example of abstract thinking we may refer
to the science of number. Numbered groups of existing
things must be distinguished from pure number. There
are, let us say, three eggs in this basket and three terms
in a syllogism. Here we have only two distinct groups
of three, because there are only two groups of countable
things to be numbered. But if we ignore the adjectival
44 G. F. STOUT i
relation of number to something else which is counted,
we find that an interminable series of groups of three is
necessarily possible. It may be said that number must
always be the number of something. In a sense, this is
true. But the something may be anything whatever if
only it is capable of being numbered. Thus pure number
is not considered as an adjective of anything except of the
numerable as such. This is equivalent to making it
merely an adjective of itself and therefore not an adjective
at all. It is not an adjective because the conception of
the numerable as such is included in the abstract con-
ception of number itself. Now pure number thus defined
is certainly real inasmuch as it has a positive and
determinate nature to which our thought concerning it
may or may not conform. We can discover arithmetical
truths and we can make arithmetical blunders. Further
the field for thought which has pure number for its object
is inexhaustible in range and complexity. A mind such
as that of Aristotle's deity might occupy itself for ever
with abstract number and nothing else to all eternity
without exhausting its resources. So long as it was
interested in this object there would be no reason why
it should turn to any other.
IX. Certainty
§ io. In the initial statement of our problem stress was
laid on the apparent fact that the unreal in erroneous belief
is present to consciousness in the same manner as the real
in true belief. We have now to point out that this is not
always so. It is not so where the essential conditions of
the possibility of error are absent. For, in such cases, a
question answers itself so as to render doubt meaningless.
This holds good for my assertion of my own existence as
a conscious being and for such propositions as " 2 + i = 3 "
or " Trilateral figures are triangular." In instances of this
kind we can raise a doubt only by abandoning the proper
question for another which is irrelevant. We may, for
instance, ask : How far can we trust our faculties ? But
, ERROR 45
inquiries of this sort are futile and even nonsensical.
They presuppose a meaningless separation of the thinking
process from what is thought of, and then proceed to ask
how far the thinking process, regarded merely as
someone's private psychical affection can be " trusted " to
reveal a reality extraneous to it. In all cognition, what
we " trust " is not the psychical process of thinking or
perceiving, but the thing itself which is thought of or
perceived — the thing concerning which we raise a question.
It is urged by Mr. Bradley that all propositions, except
perhaps certain assertions concerning the Absolute as such,
must be more or less erroneous. His reason is that they
are all conditional and that their conditions are never
fully known. Whatever exists, exists within the universe
and it is conditioned by the whole constitution of the
universe. But if what exists within a whole is con-
ditioned by so existing, no assertion as to what exists is
true if stated apart from this condition. This argument
seems to involve a confusion. It confuses conditions of
the truth of a proposition with conditions of that which is
stated in the proposition.1 When I say, — " If this
witness is to be trusted, Jones committed the theft," the
"if" introduces a condition of the first kind. It suggests
uncertainty. When I say, " If a figure is trilateral it is
triangular," the "if" introduces a condition of the
second kind. It does not suggest uncertainty. My own
existence as a conscious being has conditions far too
complex and obscure for me to discover. But these
conditions do not condition the truth of the proposition
that I exist. The inverse is the case. Because I am
certain that I exist, I am certain that all the conditions
of my existence, whatever they may be, exist also. Be
they what they may, they are all logically included in the
import of my thought when I affirm my own existence.
Mr. Bradley's contention seems to rest on the assump-
tion that, unless the universe is completely known, every
1 This distinction corresponds in principle with that drawn by Mr. W. E.
Johnson, between Conditional and Hypothetical propositions. Cf. Keynes, Formal
Logic, pp. 271 seq.
46 G. F. STOUT i
assertion or denial about its contents must be liable to
the error of ignorance, or rather, must actually incur the
error of ignorance. Since we do not know everything, it
is assumed that there always may be, or rather, must be
something unknown which would be seen to falsify our
judgment if we knew it. But this view is untenable if
we are right in maintaining that there are limits to the
possibility of error. Unexplored conditions can affect the
truth of a statement only in so far as they are relevant, and
their relevancy in each case depends on the nature of the
question raised. Suppose the question to be, What is
the sum of two and two ? By the very nature of the
problem there can be no relevant data except just two
and two considered as forming a sum of countable units.
It may be urged that perhaps the numbers to be added
do not exist, or that they may be incapable of forming a
sum. But these doubts become meaningless as soon as
we try to count. If there is nothing to count there can
be no counting. But the supposition is absurd. Suppose,
per impossibile, that we fail to find anything to count in
the first instance. Our failure may then be counted as
one thing and the act of counting it may be counted as
another, and this second act of counting as yet another,
and so on ad infinitum.
To pursue this topic farther would lead outside the
limits of the present essay. It is enough here to insist
that there is such a thing as logically unconditioned truth.
In order to attain absolute knowledge, it is by no means
necessary to wait until we have attained an adequate
knowledge of the absolute. The truth of judgments
concerning what is real is not logically dependent on the
truth of judgments concerning " Reality " with a capital R.1
1 I am aware that this essay is likely to raise more questions in the reader's
mind than it even attempts to solve. Some of these I hope to deal with in the
future ; e.g. the relation of the universal to the particular, the nature of the
material world, and the nature and possibility of thought as dependent on the
constitution of the Absolute. In dealing with these topics, I hope to develop
more fully the grounds of that divergence from Mr. Bradley which is referred to
in § 10 and implied elsewhere.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES
By F. C. S. Schiller
I. The Growth of Experience
i. Agreement that the world is experience + connecting principles — why we
should start rather than conclude with this.
2. But (a) whose experience ? Ours. Why self cannot be analysed away ;
why knowledge of self depends on experience.
3. (b) Experience of what ? The world. But what the world is, it is not
yet possible to say completely.
4. (1) The World not ready-made datum but constructed by a process of
evolution,
5. (2) i.e. of trial or experiment — original flexibility or indeterminateness
of world. Experiment suggested by practical needs — conscious and
unconscious experimenting.
6. (3) Limits of experimenting — ' matter ' as resisting medium — impossi-
bility of saying what it is in itself. Conception of material world
developing in experience. Value of Aristotelian description of a
v\t) capable of being moulded.
7. (4) The ' World,' therefore, is what is made of it — plastic. How far,
to be determined only by trying. But methodologically plasticity
assumed to be complete. Provisional character of our ' facts.5
8. Bearing of this '•pragmatism ' or ' radical empiricism ' on the nature of
axioms. Their origin as postulates to which we try to get world to
conform. Contrast with the old empiricism and apriorism.
II. Criticism of Empiricism
9. (1) Its standpoint psychological, (2) intellectualist, (3) axioms pre-
supposed in the experience which is supposed to impress them on us —
Mill's admissions, (4) derivation not historical, but ex post facto recon-
struction, (5) its incompleteness, (6) impossibility of really tracing
development of axioms and so unprogressiveness.
III. Criticism of Apriorism
10-25. Its superficial plausibility and real obscurity. Fallacy of inferring
from §9(3) that there are a priori truths.
11. How postulates also yield 'universality' and 'necessity.' 'Necessity'
and need.
47
48 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
12. 'Condition of all possible experience' means? Might be (i) cause or
psychical antecedent, (2) presupposition of reflection {logical), or (3)
ethical or cesthetical. Objections.
13. Meaning of i a priori'1 ; (1) logical or (2) psychological 1 Equivocations of
apriorist authority.
14-18. The a priori as logical. But why analyse in Kant's way ? Exclusive
correctness of Kantian analysis not to be based either (1) on its a priori
truth, or (2) on experience of its satisfactory working. Else why should
Kantians have tried to better it ?
15. Kant's derivation of his analysis from psychology.
16. Even if it were satisfactory, no proof that it would be the only or the
best possible.
17. If a priori is not in time, its superiority to the a posteriori merely
honorific.
18. Kant's analysis neither simple nor lucid.
19-22. A priori as psychical fact. But if so, has it (1) been correctly
described ? (2) how is it distinguished from innate idea? (3) does not
epistemology merge in psychology ?
20. As facts a priori truths have a history, which must be inquired into.
21. A priori faculties tautologous, and
22. should not be treated as ultimate.
23. Result that science of epistemology rests on systematic confusion of
alternative interpretations of apriority. The proper extension of logic
and psychology.
24. Intellectualism of both apriorism and empiricism incapacitates them from
recognising unity and activity of organism. How this may be recognised
by deriving axioms from a volitional source by postulation.
25. Kant's recognition of postulation in ethics— its conflict with his 'critical'
theory of knowledge — resulting dualism intolerable. Hence either
(1) suppress the Practical Reason or preferably (2) extend postulation
to Theoretic Reason.
IV. Some Characteristics of Postulation
26. Postulates at first tentative and not always successful — their various
stages and common origin — the theoretic possibility of changing axioms
not practically to be feared.
27. Postulates not a coherent system inter se except as rooted in personality.
V. The Postulation of Identity
28. Not to be derived out of nothing, but out of a prior psychical fact on
the sentient level of consciousness — why consciousness itself cannot be
derived — its characteristics on the sentient level.
29. Hence identity (of self) first felt in the coherence and continuity of
mental processes, and forms basis for the postulation of identity — the
practical necessity of recognising the 'same ' in the ' like.'
30. Once postulated, identity proves a great success, though never completely
realised in fact. Stages of identity- postulation : (1) recognition of
others and objects of perception. But these change and so do not
provide a stable standard of comparison. Hence (2) postulation of
ideally identical selves.
31. (3) Meaning demands absolute identity and recognition leads to cogni-
tion— advantage of classification by ' universals ' which abstract from
differences.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 49
32. (4) The use of language, i.e. identifiable symbols, connected with the
demand for identity.
33. Logical bearings of this doctrine. The practical purpose of the judgment
as the clue to the meaning of predication and as determining the limits
to which abstraction shall be carried.
34. Limitations and conventions on which the logical use of identity depends.
VI. Other Postulates
35. The concurrent development of consciousness of 'self and ' other ' = the
'external world,' postulated to account for felt unsatisfactoriness of
experience.
39. Postulation of Contradiction and Excluded Middle.
37. Hypothesis a form of postulation.
3S. Causation a demand for something whereby we can control events. Its
various formulations relative to our purposes. Sufficient Reason.
The absolutely satisfactory as 'self-evident.' The infinite regress of
reasons and causes limited by the purpose of the inquiry.
39. Postulate of ' Uniformity of Nature.' Suggested by gleams of regularity
amid primitive chaos. Methodological advantage of postulating com-
plete regularity. Its practical success.
40-3. The Space and Time Postulates. Kant's reine Anschauung a hybrid
between perception and conception and so a confusion of psychology
and logic. Really psychological data have served as basis for concep-
tual constructions which are methodological postulates.
41. Construction of physical space out of sensory data. Geometrical space
a construction to calculate behaviour of real bodies. Antithesis between
qualities of perceptual and conceptual space — reasons for postulating
the latter.
42. Alternative conceptual constructions of 'metageometry.' Their obscurity
due to their greater complexity and uselessness. A conceptual space
is valid in so far as useful, but never real.
43. Time: (i) subjective, (2) objective, (3) conceptual. (1) Too variable to
be useful, (2) a social necessity, but relative, (3) a postulate.
44. Other postulates, e.g. substance, passed over.
45-7. Postulates not yet fully axiomatic. (1) Teleology — its derivation from
the postulate of knowableness. Necessity of anthropomorphism.
Rational human action teleological. Why this is not extended by
science to nature. Its misuse by professed believers — possibility of
future use.
46. Ultimately mechanical methods imply teleology, assuming that world
is partly conformable to our ideals. But part being given, we must
assume all. Postulation as illustrating the teleology of axioms.
47. (2) Religious postulates — personality and goodness of God — immortality.
VII. Concluding Reflections
48. The psychological possibility of instinctive postulation and its relation
to logical justification.
49. The method of origins never gives complete explanation. But validity
must be connected with origin. Completeness unattainable while
knowledge is still growing.
50. Effects on philosophy — a return to practice and a perception of the
inadequacy of intellectualism.
E
50 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
51. Belief in the alleged incompetence of the reason due to (1) the putting
of questions which have no practical value and ultimate meaning,
(2) 'antinomies.' But these at bottom volitional and due to a refusal
to choose between conflicting aims. E.g. the ' insoluble mystery of
evil.' Methodological necessity of assuming all real problems to be
soluble.
52. Gain to philosophy because (1) more responsibility felt about volun-
tary confusions of thought which (2) are more easily remedied and
to which (3) the young are not pledged. Invigorating effect of Prag-
matism.
I
\ I. The first survey of his subject ought to be sufficient
to appal the intending writer on almost any philosophic
topic. The extent, variety, and persistence of the diverg-
ences of opinion which he finds are such that he needs
to be possessed of unusual faith and courage not to
despair of convincing even an unprejudiced reader — and
in philosophy where shall he be found ? — that his under-
taking holds out any prospect of scientific advance. For
it needs no little philosophic insight to perceive that
these divergences, instead of discrediting Philosophy, are
really a subtle tribute to its dignity. They testify that
in our final attitude towards life our whole personality must
be concerned, and tend to form the decisive factor in the
adoption of a metaphysic. As soon as a metaphysic
attempts to be more than 'a critical study of First Pre-
judices,' and essays to be constructive, it will always come
upon a region where different men argue differently, and
yet with equal cogency, from (apparently) the same
premisses. The most reasonable explanation of this
phenomenon is to admit that as the men are different,
and differ in their experience, neither the data which
have to be valued, nor the standards by which they are
valued, can really be the same. Indeed, the whole history
of philosophy shows that the fit of a man's philosophy is
(and ought to be) as individual as the fit of his clothes,
and forms a crushing commentary on the intolerant
craving for uniformity which ineffectually attempts to
anticipate the slow achievement of a real harmony by
the initial fallacies and brusque assumptions of a ' cheap
„ AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 51
and easy ' monism. It behoves the true philosopher,
therefore, to be tolerant, and to recognise that so long as
men are different, their metaphysics must be different, and
that even so, nay for this very reason, any philosophy is
better than none at all.
But though the ultimate differences of philosophic
opinion are probably too deeply rooted in human idio-
syncrasy to be eradicated by any force of argument, it is
none the less conducive to the progress of every philo-
sophic discussion that some common ground of (at least
apparent and preliminary) agreement should be found on
which the rival views may test their strength. This is
accordingly what I have tried to do, though it was not
without difficulty that I seemed to discover two funda-
mental points of initial agreement which would, I think,
be admitted by nearly all who have any understanding of
the terms employed in philosophic discussion. The first
of these is that the whole world in which we live is
experience and built up out of nothing else than experi-
ence. The second is that experience, nevertheless, does
not, alone and by itself, constitute reality, but, to construct
a world, needs certain assumptions, connecting principles,
or fundamental truths, in order that it may organise its
crude material and transmute itself into palatable, manage-
able, and liveable forms.
Acceptance of these two propositions does not perhaps
carry us far, and I have no desire to exaggerate its
controversial value. For, as soon as we attempt to go a
step farther and ask what, more precisely, is this ex-
perience, out of which, and for the sake of which, it is
agreed that all things are constructed, we speedily realise
that we have, here also, stumbled unwittingly into a very
quagmire of metaphysical perplexities. It is indeed a
convenient fashion in high philosophic quarters to treat
the harmless truism with the enunciation of which I have
ventured to start, as the final term in a protracted course
of dialectical philosophy, and to put forward Experience
(written of course with very large capitals) as the ultimate
explanation of all things. My excuse for not treating my
52 F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
readers (if any) to a similar performance must be that I
have neither the heart nor the head for feats of this kind,
and that they can always fall back upon the consoling
dictum that experience is Experience (with the addition
1 of the Absolute ' thrown in, if they are very inquisitive),
when they have found that my explorations in a very
different direction lead to nothing interesting or valuable.
§ 2. I shall accordingly proceed to divide my question
into two. If all the world be experience and what is
needed to understand that experience, (i) whose experi-
ence is it? and (2) of what is it experience? To both
questions again some will be satisfied to reply — ' of the
Absolute, of course.' If that really contents them, and
is all they wish to know, they had better read no further.
For my part I hold that this answer, even if it were true
and intelligible, is of no scientific or practical value what-
soever, and hence cannot be of any philosophic value
either, except to votaries of philosophies which have no
scientific or practical value.
To the first question, therefore, I shall make bold to
answer, ' our experience,' or, if that imply too much
agreement among philosophers, and I may not take a
common world for granted, more precisely, ' mi'
experience.'
Here again I must be prepared to be assailed by a
furious band of objectors intent on asking me — " Who
are you ? How dare you take yourself for granted ?
Have you not heard how the self is a complex psycho-
logical product, which may be derived and analysed
away in a dozen different ways ? And do you actually
propose to build your philosophy upon so discredited a
foundation ? "
To all this the simplicity of my humble reply may, I
fear, be thought to savour of impertinence. I shall
merely say " Abate your wrath, good sirs, I beseech you.
I am right well aware of what you urge. Only I have
observed also a few facts which in your scientific zeal you
have been pleased to overlook. In the first place I notice
that these analyses of the self you allude to are various,
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 5
and that so the self may find safety in the very multitude
of its tormentors. I observe, secondly, that the analysis
is in every case effected by a self. And it always gives
me a turn when the conclusion of an argument subverts
its own premiss. Next I note that these analyses being
the products of a self, must, if that self is (like my own)
rational, serve some purpose. But unless that purpose is
the highest of all (which in your case I see no reason
to suppose), the validity of the whole procedure will be
relative, and its value methodological. It may be
excellent, therefore, for your purposes and quite
unsuitable for mine. And, lastly, I observe that an
analysis does not fall from heaven ready made ; it is the
product of a purposive activity, and however appalling it
may sound, it remains brutum fulmen until such time as
somebody chooses to adopt it. It is from this act of
choice, then, that its real efficacy springs, and if I choose
to analyse differently or not at all, if I find it convenient
to operate with the whole organism as the standard unit in
my explications, what right have Scribes and Pharisees
to complain ? For in either case the choice must be
justified by its consequences, by the experience of its
working, and I am not aware that anything valuable or
workable has resulted from the psychological analyses in
question. I am therefore sanguine that the assumption of
my own existence, which I provisionally make, may very
possibly turn out better and be less futile than any of
the denials of the self which it may seem convenient to
maintain for certain restricted and technical purposes of
psychologies which neglect their proper problem in their
anxiety to be ranked among the ' natural sciences.'
" As for the other, personal, question — ' Who am I ?' —
that we shall see. I say we pointedly, because, to be quite
frank, I too am still learning what I am, by experience.
For unfortunately I was as little endowed with any
a priori knowledge of myself as of anything else. Hence
I can only say, provisionally, that I am at least what I
am, and what I am capable of becoming. For I have a
notion that my career is not yet over. In saying this
54 F. C. S. SCHILLER u
I do not, of course, lay claim to anything unknowable ; I
only mean that I am not anything completely known,
either to myself or any one else, until I cease to have new
experience. And if you are content to share these
humble attributes and to be selves in this sense, you are
very welcome ! "
8 3. I come next to the second question — what is it
I experience ? The answer must be very similar. My
knowledge of the object of experience — we may call it
' the world ' for short — is still imperfect and still growing.
And so though I may provisionally describe it by all the
ordinary phrases as ' external,' and material, and spatial,
and temporal, I do not attach much value to them, and
cannot honestly say that I know what it ultimately is.
For I do not know what it will ultimately turn into.
Not of course that I despair on that account of
ultimately answering this question also to everybody's
satisfaction (and especially to my own ! ). Only the
world of knowledge always seems to be painted on an
uncompleted background of the unknown, and fresh
knowledge is always coming in which modifies the total
impression. This knowledge is largely (or perhaps
wholly) the result of guesses which I cannot help making,
like my fathers before me, for practical reasons. As for
the character and the details of these guesses, are they not
written in the histories of human sciences and religions ?
§ 4. In reflecting on these histories, however, I observe
several things which seem to have no slight bearing on
the question of the nature of the world and our knowledge.
(1) The world, as it now appears, was not a ready-
made datum ; it is the fruit of a long evolution, of a
strenuous struggle. If we have learnt enough philosophy
to see that we must not only ask the ontological question,
What is it? but also the profounder epistemological
question to which it leads, Hozv do tve know what it
is ? we shall realise that it is a construction which
has been gradually achieved, and that the toil thereof
dwarfs into insignificance the proverbial labour Romanam
condcre gentem. As a rule we do not notice this, parti)'
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 55
because we are taught to neglect the history of ideas
for the sake of burdening our memory with the history
of events (which very likely did not happen in the manner
alleged), partly because the sciences have a habit of
evading the verbal confession of the changes which the
growth of knowledge has wrought in their conceptions.
Thus the physicist continues to use the term ' matter,'
although it has come to mean for him something very
different from the simple experiences of hardness and
resistance from which its development began, and although
he more and more clearly sees both that he does not
know what ' matter ' ultimately is, and that for the
purposes of his science he does not need to know, so
long as the term stands for something the behaviour
of which he can calculate.
8 5. (2) I observe that since we do not know what
the world is, we have to find out. This we do by trying.
Not having a ready-made world presented to us the
knowledge of which we can suck in with a passive
receptivity (or rather, appearing to have such a world
to some extent only in consequence of the previous
efforts of our forerunners), we have to make experiments
in order to construct out of the materials we start with
a harmonious cosmos which will satisfy all our desires
(that for knowledge included). For this purpose we
make use of every means that seems promising : we try
it and we try it on. For we cannot afford to remain
unresistingly passive, to be impressed, like the tabula rasa 1
in the traditional fiction, by an independent ' external
world ' which stamps itself upon us. If we did that, we
should be stamped out. But experience is always more
than this : it is either experiment or reaction, reaction
upon stimulation, which latter we ascribe to the 'external
world.' But reaction is still a kind of action, and its
character still depends in part on the reacting agent.
Nor have we any independent knowledge of the ' external
1 It is hard to say why this inadequate illustration should continue to haunt
philosophic discussion, the more so as it always missed the point. For as
Lotze has so well observed the ' receptivity ' of the tablet is really due to the
intrinsic nature of the wax and not to an absence of positive character.
56 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
world ' ; it is merely the systematic way in which we
construct the source of the stimulation on which we feel
ourselves to be reacting. Hence even our most passive
receptivity of sensations can, and should, be construed
as the effortless fruition of what was once acquired by
strenuous effort, rather than as the primal type to which
all experience should be reduced. In it we are living
on our capital (inherited or acquired), not helping to carve
out (' create ') the cosmos,1 but enjoying the fruits of our
labours (or of those of others !). Which is pleasant, but
not interesting. What is interesting is the course of
the active experimenting which results in the arts, the
sciences, and the habits on which our social organisa-
tion rests.
I proceed accordingly to consider the mass of experi-
ments which collectively make up the world-process and
by their issue determine the subsequent course of affairs.
At the outset there seems to be nothing determined,
(certain, or fixed about it. We may indeed shrink from
the assertion of an absolute indeterminism, but it is certain
that we cannot say what made or determined the character
of the first reaction, and that the first establishment of a
habit of reaction is a matter of immense difficulty. And
tQ_ a less extent this indeterminateness persists as the
structure of the cosmos grows. The world is always
ambiguous, always impels us at certain points to say,
' it may be,' ' either . . . or,' etc.2 Nor were it well
that it should grow rigid, unless we were assured that it
would set in forms we could not wish to change. As it
is, we have no absolute nor initial rigidity. All deter-
minations are acquired, all are ratified, by their working ;
1 It is significant that most of the words which have been used to express
the conception (?) of creation are metaphors which meant originally to hew
or shape. For if, as seems probable, the conception of absolute ' creation '
('out of nothing') be ultimately unthinkable, the assumed 'metaphor' will be
able to supply the true conception.
2 We do not, of course, affect the fact by assuming its absolute determination,
'if only we knew all.' For this is merely a postulate, devised to keep us in
good heart while calculating, and in order that we may be able to forecast the
future. We may be able to achieve the realisation of this ideal in a cosmos
absolutely determined and absolutely satisfactory, but at present it is not true
that for us practically all things are determined.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 57
nothing can be said to be absolutely exempt from modi-
fication and amendment by experience of its working.
" The intellectual cosmos also neither has nor needs
; fixed foundations whose fixity is an illusion. Like the
physical universe it is sustained by the correspondence
and interplay of its parts ; or, if we prefer it, floats freely
in a sea of the unknown, which now and again buffets it
with its waves, but across which the sciences have
established well-travelled routes of intellectual inter-
course.
The cosmos grows, as we have said, by experiment.
Such experiment may have been random at first (as
for methodological purposes we shall be prone to assume) ;
at all events it was vague, and its prescience of its issue
was probably obscure. In any case its direction is
ultimately determined not so much by its initial gropings
as by the needs of life and the desires which correspond
to those needs. Thus the logical structures of our mental
organisation are the product of psychological functions.1
It must next be admitted that when it is said that
the world is constructed by experiment, the conception
of experiment is taken very widely and in a way that
extends far beyond the conscious experiment of the
scientist who is fully aware of what he does and what he
wants, and precisely controls all the conditions. Of the
1 experimenting ' which builds up the cosmos the scientific
experiment is only an extreme case which even now is
comparatively rarely realised. Most of the experimenting
that goes on is blind or very dimly prescient, semi-
conscious or quite unconscious. To what extent there
is consciousness of the experimenting depends of course
on the mental development of the beings engaged in it ;
for while in the lowest it is infinitesimal, the more intel-
ligent they become the more capable they are of taking
the experimenting into their own hands.
But from the experimenting itself there is no escape ;
1 In this aspect logic is related to psychology as morphology is to physiology.
A 'logical necessity,' therefore, always rests upon, issues from, and is discovered
by, a psychological need. Dr. Bosanquet adopts the comparison, but does not
work it out, in his Lo^ic.
58 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
it goes on, and if we refuse to experiment, we are ex-
perimented with. Nay, in this sense we are all nature's
experiments, attempts to build up a world of beings that
can maintain themselves permanently and harmoniously.
We are asked as it were, " Can you do this ? " and if we
cannot or will not, and " do not answer," we are eliminated.
The elimination which is involved in this experimenting
habit of nature's has in modern times been widely-
recognised, under the name of Natural Selection ; its
essence is that a large number of individuals and varieties
should be produced on trial (as ' accidental variations '
or Beta /jLotpa), and that upon those that stood their trials
..best should devolve the duty of carrying on the world.
The conception of Natural Selection was suggested by
human selection ; its procedure by trying is so far
analogous to that of our own intelligence, and it is denied
to be that of an intelligence only because of a misunder-
standing of the methodological character of the postulate
of indefinite variation.1 We may therefore plausibly
contend that if a superhuman intelligence is active in the
forming of the cosmos, its methods and its nature are the
same as ours ; it also proceeds by experiment, and adapts
means to ends, and learns from experience.
We see then that there are two excellent reasons for
conceiving the notion of experiment so broadly. In the
first place it becomes possible thereby to comprehend
under one head the infinite complications and gradations
which are possible in the consciousness of the experimenter,
from the most random restlessness and the most blindly
instinctive adaptations, to the most clearly conscious
testing of an elaborate theory ; in the second, it serves
to bring out the radically tentative tendency which runs
through the whole cosmos. And if the propriety of a
phrase may be held to atone for the impropriety of a
pun, we may sum up our result by saying that the clue to
experience must be found not in words but in deeds, and
that the method of nature and the true method of philo-
sophy is not a Dialectic but a Trialectic.
1 Cf. Contemp. Rev., June 1897, p. 878.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 59
§ 6. (3) In describing our activity in constructing
the world by experimenting or making trial, I may seem
to have ignored the subject-matter of the experiment,
that in which and the conditions under which we
experiment. But of course I have no intention of
denying the existence of this factor in our experience
and, consequently, in our world. We never experiment
in vacuo ; we always start from, and are limited by,
conditions of some sort. Just as our experiment must
have some psychological motive to prompt it and to
propel us, so it must be conditioned by a resisting
something, in overcoming which, by skilfully adapting
the means at our disposal, intelligence displays itself.
Let it be observed, therefore, that our activity always
meets with resistance, and that in consequence we often
fail in our experiments.
But while there can be no dispute as to the fact of
this resistance, there may be not a little as to its nature,
and no slight difficulty about defining it with precision.
It would be pushing Idealism to an unprofitable extreme
to revert at this point to the ancient phrases about the
Self positing its Other and so forth. But the opposite
and more usual device of dubbing it an objective or
material world which exercises compulsion upon us, is
also not free from objection.
For what is so misleading about this traditional
manner of talking is that it implies just what we have
seen to be untrue, viz. that there is an objective world
given independently of us and constraining us to
recognise it. Whereas really it is never an independent
fact, but ever an aspect in our experience, or better still,
a persisting factor in it, which we can neither isolate nor
get rid of. Hence, however far back we essay to trace
it, we can never say either what it is really and in itself,
or that it has disappeared. If we take it as it appears
in our experience as now organised, we are, similarly,
met with the difficulty that what it now is is nothing
definitive, but merely a term in a long development the
end of which is not yet in sight. And if, led by such
6o F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
considerations, we look forward and declare that the
objective world most truly is whatever it develops into,
who will take it upon himself to prophesy concerning its
future developments, and guarantee that it will always
remain objective in the way it is at present, that it will
continue to resist and constrain ? For already it is only
partially true that it constrains us ; it is becoming
increasingly true that we constrain it, and succeed in
moulding it into acceptable shapes. In what sense,
therefore, should we continue to call ' objective ' a world
which had ceased to be objectionable and had become
completely conformable and immediately responsive to
our every desire ?
The truest account, then, it would seem possible to
give of this resisting factor in our experience is to revive,
for the purpose of its description, the old Aristotelian
conception of ' Matter ' as v\i) Bcktikt} rod eiSovs, as
potentiality of whatever form we succeed in imposing on
it. It may be regarded as the raw material of the
cosmos (never indeed wholly raw and unworked upon),
out of which have to be hewn the forms of life in which
our spirit can take satisfaction. To have lost this sense
of ' matter,' in the effort to render its notion more precise
and useful for the purposes of the natural sciences, is a
real loss to philosophy. And yet the notion of matter
as an indeterminate potentiality which, under the proper
manipulations, can assume the forms we will, reasserts
itself de facto whenever the great physicists set themselves
to speculate respecting the ' ultimate constitution of
Matter.' For provided only that their results enable
them to calculate, more or less, the behaviour of sensible
matter, they never hesitate to calculate into existence
new ' ethers ' and modes of matter and to endow them
with whatever qualities their purpose demands and their
imagination suggests.
§ 7. (4) The world, then, is essentially vXtj, it is what
we make of it. It is fruitless to define it by what it
originally was or by what it is apart from us (r; v\t]
ayvwaro^ fcaO' avrrjv) ; it is what is made of it. Hence
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 61
my fourth and most important point is that the world is
plastic, and may be moulded by our wishes, if only we are
determined to give effect to them, and not too conceited
to learn from experience, i.e. by trying, by what means we
may do so.
That this plasticity exists will hardly be denied, but
doubts may be raised as to how far it extends. Surely,
it may be objected, it is mere sarcasm to talk of the
plasticity of the world ; in point of fact we can never go
far in any direction without coming upon rigid limits and
insuperable obstacles. The answer surely is that the
extent of the world's plasticity is not known a priori, but
must be found out by trying. Now in trying we can
never start with a recognition of rigid limits and in-
superable obstacles. For if we believed them such, it
would be no use trying. Hence we must assume that we
can obtain what we want, if only we try skilfully and
perseveringly enough. A failure only proves that the
obstacles would not yield to the method employed : it
cannot extinguish the hope that by trying again by other
methods they could finally be overcome.
Thus it is a methodological necessity to assume that the
world is wholly plastic, i.e. to act as though we believed
this, and. .will yield us what we want, if we persevere in
wanting it.
To what extent our assumption is true in the fullest
sense, i.e. to what extent it will work in practice, time and
trial will show. But our faith is confirmed whenever, by
acting on it, we obtain anything we want ; it is checked,
but not uprooted, whenever an experiment fails.
As a first attempt to explain how our struggle to
mould our experience into conformity with our desires is
compatible with the ' objectivity ' of that experience, the
above may perhaps suffice, though I do not flatter myself
that it will at once implant conviction. Indeed I expect
rather to be asked indignantly — ' Is there not an objective
nature which our experiments do not make, but only
discover? Is it not absurd to talk as if our attempts
could alter the facts ? And is not reverent submission to
62 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
this pre-existing order the proper attitude of the searcher
after truth ? '
The objection is so obvious that the folly of ignoring
it could only be exceeded by that of exaggerating its
importance. It is because of the gross way in which this
is commonly done that I have thought it salutary to
emphasise the opposite aspect of the truth. We have
heard enough, and more than enough, about the duty of
humility and submission ; it is time that we were told
that energy and enterprise also are indispensable, and that
as soon as the submission advocated is taken to mean
more than rational methods of investigation, it becomes a
hindrance to the growth of knowledge. Hence it is no
longer important to rehearse the old platitudes about
sitting at the feet of nature and servilely accepting the
kicks she finds it so much cheaper to bestow than half-
pence. It is far more important to emphasise the other
side of the matter, viz. that unless we ask, we get nothing.
We must ask often and importunately, and be slow to
take a refusal. It is only by asking that we discover
whether or not an answer is attainable, and if they cannot
alter the ' facts,' our demands can at least make them
appear in so different a light, that they are no longer
practically the same.
For in truth these independent ' facts,' which we have
merely to acknowledge, are a mere figure of speech. The
growth of experience is continually transfiguring our
' facts ' for us, and it is only by an ex post facto fiction
that we declare them to have been ' all along ' what they
have come to mean for us. To the vision of the rudi-
mentary eye the world is not coloured ; it becomes so only
to the eye which has developed colour ' sensitiveness ' : just
so the ' fact ' of each phase of experience is relative to
our knowledge, and that knowledge depends on our efforts
and desires to know. Or, if we cling to the notion of an
absolutely objective fact of which the imperfect stages of
knowledge only catch distorted glimpses, we must at least
admit that only a final and perfect rounding- off of
knowledge would be adequate to the cognition of such
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 63
fact. The facts therefore which we as yet encounter are
not of this character : it may turn out that they are not
what they seem and can be transfigured if we try. Hence
the antithesis of subjective and objective is a false one :
in the process of experience ' subject ' and ' object ' are
only the poles, and the ' subject ' is the ' positive ' pole
from which proceeds the impetus to the growth of
knowledge. For the modifications in the world, which we ■
desire, can only be brought about by our assuming them
to be possible, and therefore trying to effect them. There-
is no revelation either of nature or of God, except to
those who have opened their eyes ; and we at best are
still self-blinded puppies.
Even the notion that the appearances which reality
assumes to our eyes may depend on the volitional attitude
which we maintain towards them is a truism rather than
an absurdity,1 and nothing is more reasonable than to
suppose that if there be anything personal at the bottom
of things, the way we behave to it must affect the way it
behaves to us. The true absurdity, therefore, lies in our
ignoring the most patent facts of experience in order to
set up the Moloch of a rigid, immutable and inexorable
Order of Nature, to which we must ruthlessly immolate
all our desires, all our impulses, all our aspirations, and all
our ingenuity, including that which has devised the very
idol to which it is sacrificed !
§ 8. The above sketch of the nature and manner of
the process which has moulded us and the world of our
experience may have seemed to bear but remotely on the
relations of Axioms to Postulates. In reality, however,
it will be found that the whole subsequent argument has
already had its main lines mapped out by our introductory
discussion of the Weltanschauung which Prof. James
has called pragmatism and radical empiricism.2 For when,
1 Cf. James' Will to believe, pp. 28, 61, 103 foil. And it is, of course, psycho-
logically true that not only our delusions but also our perceptions depend on what
we come prepared to perceive.
2 Regarded as labels perhaps, neither of these terms is quite satisfactory.
But as philosophic, like political, parties are commonly named (or nicknamed) by
their opponents, it would be premature to attempt fixity of nomenclature until
criticism has had its say.
64 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
as we must do, we apply it to the theory of our cognitive
faculties and the first principles whereby in knowledge we
elaborate our experience (§ i), it leads to a very distinctive
treatment of epistemological problems, differing widely
from those traditionally in vogue. It follows that the
general structure of the mind and the fundamental
principles that support it also must be conceived as
growing up, like the rest of our powers and activities, that
is, by a process of experimenting, designed to render the
world conformable to our wishes. They will begin their
career, that is, as demands we make upon our experience
or in other words as postulates, and their subsequent
sifting, which promotes some to be axioms and leads to
the abandonment of others, which it turns out to be too
expensive or painful to maintain, will depend on the
experience of their working.
The contrast with both of the traditional accounts of
the matter, both that of the old empiricism and of
epistemological apriorism is well marked, and I hope to
show that its superiority is no less palpable.
The truth is that both the traditional accounts of the
nature of Axioms are demonstrably wrong, and though to
give such a demonstration may appear a digression, it will
ultimately facilitate our progress. I shall accordingly
indulge in a criticism, which will show that the axiomatic
first principles, whereby we organise and hold together our
knowledge, are neither the products of a passive experienc-
ing, nor yet ultimate and inexplicable laws or facts of our
mental structure, which require from us no effort to attain
comprehension but only recognition and reverence as ' a
priori necessary truths.' In the case of empiricism the
criticism will be comparatively brief and easy, because its
inadequacy is pretty generally conceded ; apriorism will
demand a lengthier and more difficult discussion, because
it has attempted to conceal its inadequacy behind so many
technicalities of language, so many obscurities of argu-
mentation and a fundamental duplicity in its standpoint.
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 65
II
§ 9. Taking then the old empiricism first, we observe
that there seems to be little doubt about its standpoint.
Its derivation of the axioms is frankly psychological,
and describes how the mind may be conceived actually
to come by them. Its psychology is doubtless mistaken,
and its recourse to psychology to settle the problem of
knowledge may often be crudely worded, but it propounds
a definite method of answering a real question. And we
are at least free from the perplexities which arise in
apriorism when an argument is conducted on two planes at
once, the psychological and the epistemological (logical),
and the relations of the two are left carefully undefined.
Secondly, it should be noted that empiricist psychology
is at bottom quite as much infected with intellectualism
as that of the apriorists. It conceives, that is, the
experience which yields the elements of our mental
structure as cognitive (' impressions,' ' ideas,' etc.) ; it
does not place the central function of mental life in
volitional striving and selective attention. Now intel-
lectualism, though it may lend itself to many descriptive
purposes in psychology and hence will probably never
wholly disappear, is ultimately a misdescription of mental
life even as psychology, while it is essentially incapable
of connecting itself with the wider biological context, in
which the organism is conceived as reacting on its
environment, or with the higher ethical plane, on which
it is conceived as a responsible person.
I pass to the graver counts of the indictment. Em-
piricism conceived a purely passive mind as being moulded
by an already made external world into correspondence
with itself in the course of a process of experience which
overcame whatever native refractoriness the mind pos-
sessed.1 Hence we come by our belief that every event
has a cause in consequence of the fact that there are
causes in nature, and that this eventually impresses itself
1 It is thus the exact converse of the account given above (§ 6) in which
moulding activity was due to ' mind,' and resistance to ' matter.'
F
66 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
upon us ; two and two make four, because there are units
which behave so, and we must count them thus and not
otherwise, though in another world, as Mill consistently
observed, they might insist on making five, and force
upon us a new arithmetic. So also it is because nature is
uniform that an unbroken series of inductions per ennmera-
tionem simplicem hammers into us the principle of the
' uniformity of nature.'
To all this the fatal objection holds that these prin-
ciples cannot be extracted from experience because they
must already be possessed before experience can confirm
them. Hume's simple discovery, that the connection of
events which all assume is never a fact of observation, is
as awkward for empiricism as for apriorism. Unless,
therefore, we look upon the succession of events as
possibly regular, it can yield no evidence of a principle
of regularity ; until we count them, things are not
numbered, until we look for order, order does not
appear. In the case of the uniformity of nature Mill
indeed practically concedes this ; he admits {Logic, bk. iii.
ch. iii. § 2, and ch. vii. § i) that "nature not only is
uniform, but is also infinitely various," that some pheno-
mena " seem altogether capricious," and that " the order
of nature as perceived at a first glance presents at every
instant a chaos followed by another chaos." Now if this
is still true of the impression produced on us by nature,
whenever we assume the receptive attitude of a disinterested
observer, how much more of a chaos must nature have
appeared to the primitive intelligence which had yet to
lay down the fundamental principles of cosmic order ? !
The truth is that the whole empiricist account of the
derivation of axioms is not psychological history experi-
enced by the primitive mind : like so much ' inductive
logic ' it is at best an ex post facto reinterpretation (for
logical purposes) of such experience by a reflecting mind
which has already grasped, and long used, the principles
1 There is of course ample evidence that this was actually felt to be the case.
Primitive animism is [inter alia) an explanation of the material chaos of experi-
ence by a corresponding spiritual chaos, conceived as rather more manageable.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 67
of cosmic order. To the primitive mind such principles
can at most be suggested by the regularity of phenomena
like, e.g., the alternation of day and night, or of organic
habits (breathing, heartbeat, hunger, etc.) already acquired
before reflection begins ; but if mere experience were the
source of axioms, such suggestions of regularity would
necessarily have their effect effaced by the preponder-
antly chaotic character of the bulk of experience, and
would be swept away by a cataract of ' lawless '
impressions.
Again it is incumbent on us to note the difficulty of
generalising the empiricist derivation of Axioms : though
Empiricism is over 2000 years old, it has never been
completely carried out, and few indeed would be found to
envy the empiricist the task, e.g. of adequately deriving
the Principle of Identity.
And lastly, it affords just ground for complaint that
empiricism as it stands, does not really satisfy the desire
the appeal to which constituted its chief charm. It does
not really exhibit the derivation of the axioms in a
process of experience. It asserts indeed that such a
derivation occurred. But it assigns to it a date in a
so remotely prehistoric and prelogical age that it is im-
possible to observe the details of the process. And in
any case the process is complete. Thus, according to
Mill, the romance of the axioms is past before real
thinking and scientific induction begin : association has
engendered them, but that does not prevent them from
being final constituents of the present intellectual order;
once established " in the dim red dawn of man," they
are exempt from further vicissitudes, and undergo no
selection or real confirmation in the development of our
intelligence. Thus they lay claim to the same vicious
finality as their rivals the a priori structures of the mind :
neither the one nor the other leaves room for a real
growth in the intrinsic powers of the mind.
I
68 F. C. S. SCHILLER n
III
§ 10. But to castigate empiricism is to flog a dead
horse ; to go on an expedition against apriorism is to
plunge into an enchanted forest in which it is easy to
miss the truth by reason of the multitude of " universal
and necessary truths " which bar one's way.
At first, indeed, nothing seems easier and more obvious
than the considerations upon which apriorism is based.
If there are certain truths which are necessary to all
knowing, which are implied in the existence of every
act of knowledge, if these truths cannot be derived from
experience because they are presupposed by all experi-
ence, if, as we said, we must be in possession of them
before experience can confirm them, then what can we
do but call them a prior'i and suppose that they reveal
the ultimate self-evident structure of the mind, which
we must recognise, but which it would argue impiety to
question and fatuity to derive ?
Nevertheless I propose to show that beneath the thin
crust of this self-evidence there lie concealed unsuspected
depths of iniquity, that the clearness of the doctrine is
superficial and gives way to deepening obscurity the
farther it is explored, that in every one of the specious
and familiar phrases, which apriorists are wont to fling
about as the final deliverances of epistemological wisdom,
there lurk indescribable monsters of ambiguity. Nay,
my criticism will culminate in a demonstration that
the whole conception of an independent and autonomous
theory of knowledge is afflicted with an ineradicable
and incurable confusion of thought, the clearing up of
which demolishes the locus standi of the whole apriorist
position.
Let us note then in the first place that as an inference
from the break-down of the old empiricism apriorism is
devoid of cogency. It does not follow that because the
1 necessary ' truths are presupposed in all experience they
are, in the technical sense, a priori. We must indeed
be possessed of them to organise our experience, but we
n
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 69
need not be possessed of them in the manner asserted.
It suffices that we should hold them experimentally, as
principles which we need practically and would like to
be true, to which therefore we propose to give a trial,
without our adoring them as ultimate and underivable
facts of our mental structure. In other words they may
be prior to experience as postulates} ^^
§11. Similarly the method of postulates is capable of
supplying an alternative explanation of what, since Kant,
have been esteemed two infallible marks of a genuine a
priori truth, viz. its universality and necessity. It is
not enough merely to contend that these truths cannot
come from experience, because experience can only give
fact and not necessity (or at least not an objective
necessity), and because it can never guarantee an absolute
universality which applies to the future as well as to
the present and past. For a postulate possesses both
these valuable characteristics by as good a right as an a
priori truth, and is not afflicted with the impotence that
besets a mere record of past experience.
Its universality follows from its very nature as a
postulate. If we make a demand that a certain principle
shall hold, we naturally extend our demand to all cases
without distinction of time, past, present, and to come.
The shrinking modesty which clings to the support of
precedent is out of place in a postulate. A truth which
we assume because we want it may as well be assumed
as often as we want it and for all cases in which it may
be needed. We can make it therefore as universal as
we please, and usually we have no motive for not
making it absolutely universal.2 Nor is the enormity
1 To meet the obvious criticism that most people are quite unaware that they
postulate in knowing, it may be well to add that the postulating, like the ' experi-
menting,' may proceed with little or no consciousness of its nature. Indeed
this is precisely the reason why the voluntarist and postulatory character of
mental life has been so little recognised, and its assertion still appears such a
novelty in philosophy. The philosophers who indignantly reject it argue that
they are not aware of postulating, and ergo there is no such thing. But this
is a mere ignoratio elenchi, and does not prove that they are not deluded.
2 Sometimes, it is true, a principle which is assumed as useful for one
purpose turns out later on to conflict with another. The scientific postulate of
determinism and its relations to the ethical postulate of freedom are a good
example. In such cases there is a temptation to deny the absolute universality
70 F. C. S. SCHILLER n
of a postulate lessened, or atoned for, by self-denying
economy in the use of it. A postulate is none the less
a postulate because it is a little one, and if in making
it we sin, we may as well sin boldly.1
4 Similarly the ' necessity ' of a postulate is simply an
indication of our need. We want it and so must have it,
as a means to our ends. Thus its necessity is that of
intelligent purposive volition, not of psychical (and still
less of physical) mechanism.2 The inability to think
of one or both of the conflicting principles. But the better way of obviating the
conflict is to emphasise the fact that each principle is relative to the purpose for
which it was assumed, and that consequently, on their respective planes and from
their several points of view, both principles may be universally valid, though one
or the other, or both, must eventually be subjected to reinterpretation.
1 It is a great satisfaction to me to find myself on this point in complete agree-
ment with Dr. Hodder ( The Adversaries of the Sceptic, p. 14) whose merciless
castigation of the half-hearted postulatings of some modern logicians, can,
to my mind, be met only by an open avowal of the fundamental part played by
postulation in the constitution of all knowledge (including Dr. Hodder's scepticism).
2 I am of course painfully aware that the term necessity is exceedingly
equivocal. At first sight it seems as though we could distinguish —
1. 'Absolute' and intrinsic necessity sui (et optimi) juris (Aristotle's
avayKcuov arrXCos Kal irpwTios), of which the 'necessity' of a priori truths is
commonly reputed to be an illustrious example.
2. The conditional necessity of a logical train of thought, in which the
conclusion follows ' necessarily ' from its premisses.
3. The necessity of the ' necessary conditions ' under which all actions take
place. This influence of the given material is Aristotle's o5 ouk &vev.
4. The necessity of means to ends (Aristotle's &v ouk &i>ev to dyadov), which
renders the ' necessary ' ultimately the ' needful. '
5. The psychical feeling of ' having to ' or ' compulsion ' (Aristotle's
avayKalov /9£p).
But in reality the last two alone of these senses are primary and descriptive ot
ultimate facts about our mental constitution, from which the others may be
derived. The feeling of necessity (No. 5) may be evoked by a variety of
circumstances, by physical constraint, by attempts to deny facts of perception, or
to interrupt a train of thought which coheres, either logically, or psychologically
(for all minds, or for an individual's mind). It arises wherever a volition is
thwarted, and not until this occurs ; hence the necessity alike of fact and of
reasoning appears to be 'implicit.' The truth, however, is that factual data
and logical reasonings are not ' necessary ' in themselves ; their ' necessity ' is
only aroused in consciousness when the will needs to affirm them against
resistance in the pursuit of its ends. That ' 2 and 2 must be 4 ' only marks the
rejection of some other result : if we desire to adhere to our system of
arithmetical assumptions and are determined to go on counting, we cannot be
called upon to add 2 and 2 in any other way. But behind the ' cant ' there
always lurks a ' won't ' : the mind cannot stultify itself, because it will not
renounce the conceptions it needs to order its experiences. The feeling of
necessity, therefore, is at bottom an emotional accompaniment of the purposive
search for the means to realise our ends (sense 4). And inasmuch as the
pursuit of means is unmeaning except in beings working under limitations
in their choice of means, which means are themselves extracted from the
resisting material (i»\ij), the 'necessity' of the material conditions (sense 3)
comes to be bound up with and included under this (4th) head.
As for ' absolute necessity ' (sense 1) it is altogether a misnomer, involving a
n
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 71
them otherwise, which is supposed to distinguish necessary
truths, is at bottom a refusal to do so, a refusal to strip
oneself of useful means of harmonising one's experience
at the summons of a casual doubt. To argue, then, from
the universality and necessity of our axioms to their
a priori origin is a non sequitur which should not be
allowed to pass unchallenged, even if there were no
alternative theory in the field.
§12. Let us consider next the possible meanings
of the phrase ' a condition of all possible experience.'
When an a priori truth is so denominated, what is the
precise meaning attached to ' condition ' ? Does it mean
that without which experience cannot be, or cannot be
thought, or cannot be thought in an cesthetically pleasing or
ethically satisfactory manner! Evidently we ought to
distinguish between a truth which is operative as a
psychical antecedent fact causing the subsequent
experience and a logical factor which is detected in that
experience by subsequent reflection, but need not be
actually present in consciousness at the time of
experiencing, and so cannot be called a psychical fact.
In the latter case the ' condition of the possibility of
experience ' is not anything actually necessary to the
experience, but rather necessary to its ex post facto
reconstruction which ministers to our desire for the logical
ideal of an intelligible system of experience.
And of course the answer to the question — what are
the conditions of thinking such a logical system ? — will
depend on the mode of logical analysis we may choose to
adopt : hence the burden of proof will rest with the
advocates of any particular form of apriorism that their
account is the only one possible.
All these considerations may be urged with still
contradiction in adjectis : necessity is always dependence, and the factual only
becomes ' necessary ' by having a ground assigned to it, i.e. by sacrificing
its independence and becoming hypothetical. But the hypothetical necessity of
thought (sense 2), into which it is thus absorbed, is itself reducible to a means :
Our coherent systems of ' necessary connection ' can (and will) be shown to be
but means for the realisation of our purposes in thinking, and apart from these
possess no necessity. No one need add 2 and 2 as 4 unless he needs to add, i.e.
wills to add them, because he needs arithmetic.
72 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
greater force against versions of the a priori conditions of
experience which reduce themselves to demands (it is
true for the most part semi-conscious and unavowed)
that the cosmos shall conform to various aesthetical and
ethical ideals : such demands may be entirely legitimate
in their way, and I myself would be the last to think the
worse of any philosopher for showing susceptibility to
ethical and aesthetical ideals, and holding that their
realisation also is included in the conditions of a thoroughly
rational experience. But should they not be avowed as
such ? and is it not entirely improper to mask them under
the ambiguity of ' the conditions of experience ' ? There
remains then only the first interpretation, which takes the
' condition ' to be an actual psychical fact, and so decides
in one way the very debatable question which must next
engage our attention.
TS 1 3. What does a priori mean? When we speak
of ' the a priori principles implied in the existence of
all knowledge,' do we mean implied Jogically ox psycho-
logically ? Are they, that is, the products of a logical
analysis or psychical facts ? Is the ' priority ' asserted
priority in time (psychical fact) or priority in idea (logical
order) ? Or, horribile dictu, can it be that the a priori,
as it is used, is a little of both, or each in turn, and that
the whole apriorist account of our axioms rests on this
fundamental confusion ?
Of course it would be very pleasant if we could
answer this question by an appeal to authority, if we
could find, for choice in Kant, or, if not, in some of
his followers and interpreters, an unambiguous and
authoritative settlement of this question. But unfortu-
nately Kant's own utterances are so obscure, ambiguous,
and inconsistent, and his followers are in such disagreement,
that this short and easy way is barred, and that we shall
have to adopt the longer, and perhaps more salutary,
method of arguing out the logical possibilities of each
interpretation.
§ 14. I shall, accordingly, begin by considering the
interpretation of the a priori as a term in a logical
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 73
analysis, as it seems on the whole to be that best
"supported and most supportable.
If we take the a priori as the outcome of a logical
juquhy, as the product of a logical analysis describing
how the formation of knowledge out of its constituent
factors is to be conceived, if the world is to be thinkable
{i.e. to satisfy our logical ideals), then the first point of
which we shall require an explanation is how zve come
by these factors. In the Kantian analysis knowledge
is said to arise out of the union of heterogeneous
elements, Sensation and Thought, the former supplying
the Matter, the latter the Form. But what authenticates
Kant's fundamental antithesis of Matter and Form,
Sensation and Thought, so that it should be imperative
on every one to set out from it in his analysis of the
nature of knowledge? Why are we not to be at liberty
to conduct our analysis in whatever way and by whatever
principles appear to us most suitable ? Why should we
be tied down to Kant's factors ? Has not Mr. Shadworth
Hodgson recently shown that it is possible to construct
a logical analysis of knowledge as elaborate and careful
as Kant's (though perhaps just as unsound ultimately)
without having recourse to a use of a priori principles ?
Or better still, should we not do well to go back to
Aristotle and find in his antithesis of mediate and
immediate, discursive and intuitive, the basis of an
analysis quite as legitimate in theory and far more
fertile in practice? Is it not in short an unavoidable
methodological defect of any ' epistemological ' argument
that it must rest on an arbitrary selection of fundamental
assumptions ?
So far as I can see, the exclusive claims of the
Kantian analysis could be defended only in two ways.
It might be alleged that the recognition of its truth was
itself an a priori necessity of thought. Or it might be
contended that its correctness was guaranteed by the
manner of its working, by our finding that, as a matter of
subsequent experience, it did enable us to account rationally
for all the observed characteristics of our knowledge.
74 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
*
But would not the first defence be exposed to the
crushing retort that it begged the question, and was
nothing more than a circular argument which tried to
make the unsupported allegation of a necessity of thought
into the logical ground of that allegation ?
The second defence on the other hand seems
obnoxious to a double objection. In the first place has
it not a pronounced empiricist trend, and is it consonant
with the dignity of apriorism to introduce a sort of
transcendental ' payment by results ' into the estimation
of theoretical philosophemes ? And secondly, if we
answer thus, it will be necessary, but not easy, to show
that de facto the Kantian epistemology gives a complete
and satisfactory answer to the whole problem. And I
hardly anticipate that the distinguished philosophers who
have devoted their lives to proving the necessity of going
beyond Kant to Fichte, or Hegel, or Herbart, or
Schopenhauer, because of the glaring defects they have
found in Kant's system, will find it to their taste so to
defend the Kantian position, even though it has supplied
them with the common foundation of their several systems.
We must either deny, therefore, that the truth of the
Kantian analysis of knowledge is vouched for by its
self-evident adequacy, by the pellucid cogency of its
constructions, or assert that the whole procession of
philosophers that has started from Kant has gone
hopelessly astray.
But after all it is not we who are concerned to find
our way past the uninviting horns of this dilemma ;
whether the Kantian analysis of knowledge is perfect and
his followers have erred in amending it, or whether it is
fundamentally wrong and his followers have erred in con-
tinuing it, the point which has now aroused our curiosity
is what guarantees it offers for the correctness of its
iresuppositions. Let us turn, therefore, to the history of
philosophy and inquire whence as a matter of fact Kant
derived the presuppositions of his analysis.
§15. I greatly fear the answer will be shocking.
Kant's whole construction seems to be based on psychology,
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 75
nay on the psychology of the period ! How can this be
reconciled with the assiduity with which the dominant
school of Kant-Pharisees has preached that epistemology
and psychology have nothing to do with each other and
that the former must be kept quite clear from contamina-
tion with the latter ? After it has been so long and
laboriously instilled into us that subservience to psychology
is the one deadly sin which the good epistemologist must
shun, that psychology is the wicked realm of Hume, Mill,
and the Devil, have we not a right to be shocked when
we find that Kant himself has distilled his elixir vitcz from
this broth of Hell ? Is it not intolerable then to force
us to employ psychological assumptions as to the nature
of mind ? For even though it is permitted to receive
instruction from a foe, we know that it is prudent to
dread the Danaans even when they are bearing gifts.
And yet the facts are hard to argue away. Is not the
antithesis between the 'matter' of sensation and the 'form'
of thought the old psychological distinction invented by
Plato? Again has it not often been shown1 that in its
conception of the 'manifold of sensation' the Kantian
system presupposes all the figments of an empiricist
psychology, and implies the very psychological atomism
which the whole subsequent history of philosophy has
shown to be unworkable, and which the simplest intro-
spection shows to be untrue ? And is it not in a large
measure because he vainly and falsely follows, nay out-
does, Hume in assuming a wholly unformed and unfounded
vXtj of sensations, which not all the a priori machinery
made in Germany can ever really lick into shape, that
Kant's epistemology breaks down ? t
And what Kant adds to this psychological mixture of
Platonic dualism and Humian atomism is a no less
unoriginal ingredient. It consists simply of a number
of faculties, invented ad hoc, upon which devolves the duty
(which we are vainly assured they are capable of fulfilling)
of organising the formless matter with which they are
supplied. But does not this commit the Kantian theory
1 Most recently and lucidly in Mr. Hobhouse's Theory of Kncnvledge, p. 42.
76 F. C. S. SCHILLER
n
of knowledge to another psychological fallacy, the effete
and futile doctrine of faculties ? In fine what answer
should we be able to make, nay how should we disguise
our sympathy, if an enfant terrible should arise and declare
that so far from being uncontaminated with psychology
Kantian epistemology was in reality nothing but a
misbegotten cross by faculty psychology out of Humian
atomism ?
I have never been able to discover from the apriorists
what they conceive to be the relation of logical analysis
to psychological fact, i.e. the actual process of experience,
but if, as experience shows, some reference to the latter
occurs, and is indeed inevitable, we may at least demand
that the reference should be made clear and explicit. And
in addition it may fairly be demanded that if a theory
of knowledge cannot but rest on presuppositions as to the
factual nature of conscious life, recourse should be had to
psychological descriptions of the best and most modern
type, before an attempt is made to decide what super- or
extra-psychological principles are ' implied in the exist-
ence of knowledge.'
§ 16. It would seem then that the attempt to construe
the a priori as a logical analysis independent of psycho-
logical fact is not practicable, and cannot really dispense
with an appeal to psychological assumptions which are
arbitrary and exploded. But the difficulties of this theory
of the a priori by no means end here. Supposing
even that somehow, aided, let us say, by some spiritual
influx from a nolimenal world, we had succeeded in con-
structing a complete account of the structure of knowledge
which satisfied every logical requirement, worked perfectly,
and was applicable to everything that could be called
knowledge, even so we should have gained an aesthetical
rather than logical advantage. Our epistemology would
be beautiful, because great and symmetrical, but would it
be indisputably true ? Could we not conceive some other
philosopher gifted with an equally synoptic imagination
setting himself to compete with our lovely construction,
and succeeding, perhaps, in throwing it into the shade of
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 77
oblivion by a rival structure based on different assumptions,
built up by different connections and excelling its pre-
decessors in completeness, simplicity, and aesthetic
harmony P1
Theoretically at least any number of such analyses of
knowledge would seem to be possible ; for they have only
to construct imaginary logical systems, to describe how
knowledge may be conceived to be put together, without
restriction as to the choice of principles assumed and
without reference to what actually occurs in rerum natura.
It would need therefore the decree of some absolute and
infallible despot of the intelligible world to secure for
whatever a priori account was preferred — on account of its
simplicity or aesthetic completeness or practical convenience
— a monopoly of epistemological explanation.
817. However, even this may be conceded. I am in
a yielding mood and not disposed to cavil or to stick at
trifles, and so will not contest the right divine of Kant
and his dynasty — he has too great a bodyguard of
philosophy professors.
I proceed only to point out a consequence of the
attempt to construe the a priori logically without reference
to psychical fact. It follows that its priority is not in
time. For the whole matter is one of logical analysis.
The actual knowledge, which the epistemologist professes
to analyse, is then the real fact, and prior to the analysis
which professes to explain it. It is the actual presupposi-
tion of the analysis which distinguishes in it an a priori
and an a posteriori element. Thus in actual fact the
a priori and a posteriori elements in knowledge are co-
eternal and co-indispensable, even though not esteemed
co-equal. The priority therefore of the a priori is solely
an honorific priority in dignity. A priori and a posteriori
are merely eulogistic and dyslogistic appellations, which
we are pleased to bestow upon factors which we are
pleased to distinguish in one and the same act of know-
ledge. In the concrete reality they are fused together;
there is no form without matter and no matter without
1 That this actually occurs has been shown above (§ 14).
78 F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
form — crvve^ev^dai /u,ev yap Tavra (paiverai /cat ^(opca/xov
ov he-^eadai.
Now if this be the case, I cannot for the life of me see
why such inordinate importance should be attached to the
distinction of a priori and a posteriori, nay to the whole
epistemological theory, nor why the naming and pre-
cedence of such abstractions should be accounted essentials
of philosophic salvation. What now hinders us from
inferring from the course of the argument that the
procedure and terminology of our epistemological analysis
is arbitrary and indifferent, and that the real test of truth
comes, not from any distinctions we assume beforehand,
but a posteriori and empirically from the manner of its
working ?
§ i 8. As far as the Kantian analysis of knowledge is
concerned, the issue can be narrowed down to this
question, whether it works, and is the simplest and most
convenient analysis that can be devised. If such a
contention on its behalf can be substantiated, let it be
called true, in the only sense in which mortal man can
intelligibly speak of truth ; if not, let it be finally housed
in that 'Museum of Curios' which Prof. James has so
delightfully instituted for the clumsy devices of an
antiquated philosophy.2
Now this is a question which I could not presume to
answer for others without a thorough knowledge of their
tastes and customs of thought ; but personally I have
long felt towards the Kantian epistemology not much
otherwise than Alphonso the Wise felt towards the
Ptolemaic astronomy when he realised its growing com-
plications ; and if by incantations or recantations or
decantations I could induce its author to leave the society
and the otium cum dignitate of the Thing-in-itself, I would
fain relieve my feelings by apostrophising him as follows : —
' Oh mighty Master of both Worlds and both Reasons,
Thinker of Noiimena, and Seer of Phenomena, Schematiser
of Categories, Contemplator of the Pure Forms of Intuition,
1 Aristotle, Eth. Nick. x. 4. 11.
2 Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results, p. 24.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 79
Unique Synthesiser of Apperceptions, Sustainer of all
Antinomies, all-pulverising Annihilator of Theoretic Gods
and Rational Psychologies, I conjure thee by these or by
whatever other titles thou hast earned the undying
gratitude of countless commentators, couldst thou not
have constructed the theory of our thinking activity more
lucidly and more simply?'
§19. At this point it would seem to be time for
believers in the a priori to shift their ground and to try
another version of its meaning. I expect to be told,
and in no measured terms, that I have misinterpreted
and maligned Kant, and blasphemed against the sacred
image of immutable truth which he has set up. Epistemo-
logical analysis is not the arbitrary pastime of an idle
imagination, cvSe-^o/ievov aWcos e^ecu in myriad ways.
A priori truths are facts which can neither be nor be
conceived otherwise, and without which no other know-
ledge can be or be conceived.
" You will not surely," I shall indignantly be asked,
" deny that you think by the principle of identity, that
you predicate the categories of substance and causality,
that you refer your experiences to a synthetic unity of
apperception, that you behold them in space and time ?
And we call these operations a priori, to indicate that
without them you cannot know or experience anything
at all."
Very well, then, let us recognise the a priori truths as
facts. If it is on this condition alone that I may use
them, I will gladly grovel in the dust before them rather
than that they should withdraw the light of their counten-
ance and I should be cast into outer darkness. Still I
cannot but hope that the said light is not so blinding
that I cannot behold their features. Permit me, therefore,
to trace them and to bask in their beauty.
The a priori axioms are facts — real, solid, observable,
mental facts — and woe betide the philosopher that collides
with them ! In one word they are psychical facts of the
most indubitable kind.
My delight at having found something tangible at
8o F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
the bottom of so much obscure terminology is so sincere
that I have not the heart to be critical about their psycho-
logical credentials. Let me waive, therefore, the question,
mooted before, whether they have always been described
with psychological accuracy, and by the best psychological
formulas. I waive also the cognate question whether
their description suffices to distinguish them unequivocally
from their discredited ancestors, the innate ideas, which
since Locke we have all been taught to deny with our
lips. I will postpone also an obvious question as to
what is now to prevent the theory of knowledge from
being absorbed in psychology. For I have no wish to
" sycophantise " against an argument which bids fair to
become intelligible.
§ 20. But of course I cannot close my eyes to the
consideration that observable psychical facts have a history.
The a priori axioms, therefore, may be contemplated
historically \ and psycJwgenetically ; and then, perhaps, the
valet within me whispers, it will turn out that they were
not always such superhuman heroines as they now appear,
and that they have arrived at their present degree of
serene exaltation from quite simple and lowly origins.
Accordingly I shade my eyes, thus, and scrutinise their
countenances, so, and lo ! I begin to discriminate ! They
do not all seem to be of an age or of equal rank ; some,
as Plato says,1 are irpea-jBeia ical Svvdfiec vTrepe-^ovaat.
Others seem to have been admitted into the Pantheon
in historic times, while yet others have been thrown
into the background, or even into Tartaros. Shade of
Plato ! is not even the supercelestial World of Ideas
exempt from change ? Nay more, their manners and
bearing are not uniform, and I swear by Aphrodite,
I believe some are rouged and powerless to hide the
ravages of age !
To carry on the imagery would be too painful, but
I must adhere to its meaning. If the a priori axioms
are in any sense psychical facts, or contained in psychical
facts, each of them has a theoretically traceable history,
1 Republic, 509 B.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 81
and in many cases that history is visibly written on their
faces. They are complex growths which constitute
problems for the philosophic mind ; they are in no sense
solutions of the problem of knowledge, or of any other.
Whoever then can carry their analysis farther, either
historically, by showing how, when, and why they arose,
or logically, by systematically connecting them with and
deriving them from the other constituents of our nature,
or by the mixed method to which the gaps in our know-
ledge will probably long compel us, i.e. by supplementing
and colligating actual observation by hypothesis, will
have deserved well of philosophy, even though he will
have had to sacrifice the dogma of the verbal inspiration
of the Kantian Criticism.
§21. Any such further inquiry into axioms, therefore,
is necessarily preferable to any view which is content to
leave them plaiitees la as insuperable, indissoluble, un-
questionable, ultimate facts which obstruct the advance of
science by their unintelligibleness. For what could be
more disheartening than to encounter this serried array
of a priori ' necessities of thought ' entrenched behind
craftily contrived obstructions of technical jargon, and
declining to yield or to give any account of themselves ?
Can we indeed, so long as we tolerate their pretensions,
be truly said to have explained the nature of knowledge
at all ? For what do they do to explain it ? What do
they do beyond vainly duplicating, as fiaraia et'S??, the
concrete processes of actual knowing ? At best they
seem nothing but the capita mortua of a defunct faculty
psychology, which offers us only a tautological Svvafiis in
lieu of the evipyeia whereof we desired an explanation.
I have experience of the spatially extended — forsooth,
because I am endowed with a ' pure ' faculty of space
perception ! I experience succession — forsooth, because I
have the ' pure ' form of empty time ! I refer my
experience to my 'self,' and the operation is 'explained '
by being rebaptised in the name of the Synthetic Unity
of Apperception !
I know of course that Kant supposed himself to have
G
82 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
guarded against this interpretation and the criticism which
it provokes, by denying that the 'pure intuition ' of Space
or Time is a priori only in the sense in which, e.g. the
colour sense is prior to the colour perception.1 But I
should dispute his right to do this, and contend that
in so far as he succeeded in establishing a difference, it
was only at the cost of making the ' pure intuition '
prior to experience in the evil psychological sense of
the ' innate idea.' 2
§ 22. "But is not this whole indictment based on a
refusal to recognise the axioms as ultimate ? And what
do you hope to gain thereby ? For surely you do not
mean to refuse to recognise anything as ultimate ? And
what more deserving objects could you find for such
recognition than the body of necessary truths ? "
Certainly I do not in the least mean to commit myself
to a denial of anything ultimate. Every inquiry must
stop, as it must begin, somewhere. Only I am disposed
to deny that we should stop with the ' necessary truths.'
And I urge that if by one method a fact (under investiga-
tion in pari materia, of course) appears ultimate, which
by another is easily susceptible of further analysis, then
the latter method is logically superior. And I contend
also that the so-called a priori truths do not look ultimate,
and that it is highly disadvantageous to treat them as
such : I am preparing to contend that upon proper
investigation they turn out to be certainly derivative, and
that a knowledge of their ancestry will only increase the
regard and affection we all feel for them.
It appears, then, that if a priori truth be taken as
psychical fact, it is arbitrary to treat it as ultimate, and
that we have every motive to connect it with the rest
of our mental constitution. We have thereby completed
the proof that the apriorist account of our axiomatic
1 Critique of Pure Reason, § 3, s.f.
2 Kant supports an erroneous doctrine by downright psychological blunders.
Thus he asserts that he can ' think ' empty Space and Time, but not objects out
of Space and Time. If we resolve the ambiguity of ' think,' it will appear (a)
' that both the objects and the 'pure intuitions' are alike conceivable, and (d) that
they are alike unimaginable. But Kant contrasts the unimaginableness of the
objects with the conceivableness of the intuitions to make the latter seem 'prior.'
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES S3
first principles is invalid, in whichever way it is con-
sistently taken.
§23. But then it never is consistently taken. Neither
in Kant nor in any of his successors is either interpretation
of the a priori consistently adhered to. When objections
are raised against the manifestly fictitious nature of its
psychological foundations, all connection with psychology
is indignantly disavowed. If, on the strength of this
disavowal, the whole theory of knowledge is treated as a
pretty structure which need comply only with logical
canons of formal consistency, the actual reality and de
facto use of the axioms is thrust down our throats.
And the worst of it is that this duplicity of attitude is
unavoidable. For it is in truth essential to the whole
epistemological point of view. There is no room for a
separate theory of knowledge with a peculiar standpoint,
if we assign to psychology and logic the whole field that
each of them can and ought to occupy.1 In the so-called
theory of knowledge the primary problem is psychological ;
it is a question of the correctest and most convenient de-
scription of what actually occurs in acts of knowing, i.e. a
question of psychological fact. To logic on the other hand
it appertains to estimate the value of all these cognitive
processes : all questions as to whether the judgments that
claim truth actually attain it, as to how cognitions may
be rendered consistent, may realise the purposes which we
have in knowing, may contribute to the ideals we set before
ourselves in knowing, fall into the province of the science
which aims at systematising our cognitions into a coherent
body of truth. Between these two what remains for epis-
temology to do ? From what point of view, and with what
purpose is it to treat knowledge, if both the facts and their
valuation are already otherwise provided for? It is not
a normative science like logic, and it is not descriptive
science like psychology. And the ' critical ' question —
how do we know ? — important though it is in itself, surely
1 I do not of course maintain that either science does this at present. It is
just because they are not clear as to the character and relations of their re-
spective standpoints that they leave a sort of no man's land around their border
line, for hybrids like epistemology to squat on.
84 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
does not suffice to found a science. For the question
cannot be answered unless it is asked on the basis of
definite facts and with a definite aim in view. And
whenever it is answered, the answer will always be found
to be in terms either of psychology or of logic.
§24. As the outcome of our criticism of the two
current theories of the nature of our axioms we have
arrived at the conclusion that neither the apriorist nor
the empiricist account is tenable. Both have proved
unsatisfactory ; the former because it represented the
axioms as mere brute facts of our mental organisation
(either entirely disconnected or connected only among
themselves), the latter as the fictitious imprints of a
psychologically impossible experience on a purely passive
mind.
At bottom the failure of both accounts springs from
the same source. Both are infected with an intellectualism
which is a libel on our nature, and leads them to take
too narrow a view of its endowment. Because of this
common intellectualism they fail to realise the central fact
which we always encounter so soon as we abandon the
abstract standpoints of the lower sciences and try to
conceive our relation to our experience as a whole, the
fact that the living organism acts as a whole. Or to bring
out separately the aspects of this central fact which
empiricism and apriorism severally misinterpret, we may
say that the organism is active and the organism is one.
Empiricism, with its fiction of the tabula rasa, fails
to appreciate the first aspect ; to see that, even in its
reactions on its environment, the organism is active,
reacting in a mode decided by its own nature and guided
by its aspirations towards a harmony of its experience.
Its whole attitude is one of volition and desire, which is
ultimately a yearning for the Apocalypse of some
unearthly ideal of harmonious equilibration in its whole
experience, and for the attainment of this end the whole
intellectual apparatus is a means.1
1 Of course this has not wholly escaped the notice of philosophers even in former
days, and so we may remind ourselves of Spinoza's conatus in suo esse perseverare.
ei
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 85
In short, the irpwrov -v/reOSo? of the old empiricism
is to have failed to recognise this fact of living activity
and its bearing on the growth and constitution of
the mind.
Again the organism is one and reacts as a whole.
This is what apriorism fails to appreciate. In the fierce
struggle for existence we need all our forces, and require
a compact control of all our resources to survive. The
organism, therefore, cannot afford to support a dis-
interested and passionless intelligence within it, which
hovers unconcerned above the bloodstained battlefields
of progress, or even sucks a ghoulish and parasitic
sustenance from the life-blood of practical striving.
%ea>pia must not be separated from Trpagis, but related
to it as means to end ; thought must be conceived as
an outgrowth of action, knowledge of life, intelligence of
will, while the brain which has become an instrument of
intellectual contemplation must be regarded as the
subtlest, latest, and most potent organ for effecting
adaptations to the needs of life.1
Thus the irpwrov i/reOSo? of apriorism is to take our
intelligence in abstraction from its biological and psycho-
logical setting, from its history, from its aim, and from
the function which it performs in the economy of our
nature. It perpetrates a ^topio-pos between knowing and
of Schopenhauer's Will - to - live, nay of Herbart's account of sensations as
self- maintenances of the soul. At the present day, voluntarism bids fair to
prevail over intellectualism, having obtained the support of men like James,
Wundt, Ward, Sigwart, Stout, Paulsen, Renouvier, etc. Since this was written
the recently published remains of Nietzsche ( Wille zur Macht, iii. I. 1901) have
made it manifest that he also conceived our axioms as postulates transformed
into ' truths ' by their usefulness, and that I might have quoted from him some
telling phrases to this effect.
To all this even Mr. Bradley's reiterated asseverations [Mind, N. S. , No. 41,
pp. 7, 9, etc. ) that he " cannot accept " principles which he sees to be subversive of
the dogmatic assumptions of his whole philosophy hardly seem a sufficient counter-
poise.
1 Of course this doctrine does not involve a denial of the existence (though
it does of the rationality) of a 'pure' or 'disinterested' love of knowledge 'for
its own sake. ' All our functions are liable to perversion and so as a psychological
fact, there may also occur such a perversion of the cognitive instinct ; nay, history
would even seem to show that it may persist and even be strengthened in the
course of evolution. But then the explanation probably is that ' useless '
knowledge is not nearly so useless as its votaries suppose, and that in the minds
which are capable of it the love for it is connected with other mental capacities
which are both useful and valuable.
I
86 F. C. S. SCHILLER „
feeling which renders both impotent and their de facto
union unintelligible.
^„.But when we try to grasp experience as a whole, we
must set ourselves above the encumbering abstractions
of a psychological classification that has transgressed the
limits of its validity. By conceiving the axioms as
essentially postulates, made with an ultimately practical
end, we bridge the gap that has been artificially
constructed between the functions of our nature, and
overcome the errors of intellectualism. We conceive the
axioms as arising out of man's needs as an agent, as
prompted by his desires, as affirmed by his will, in a
word, as nourished and sustained by his emotional and
volitional nature.1 It is manifest that we thereby knit
together the various factors in our nature in a far closer
and more intimate union than had previously seemed
possible. . Our nature is one, and however we distinguish,
we must not be beguiled into forgetting this, and
substituting a part for the whole. And, correspondingly,
we open out the prospect of a systematic unification of
experience of a far completer and more satisfactory
character than can be dreamt of by an intellectualist philo-
sophy. For just as the unity to which we may (and
indeed must) now aspire is no longer merely that of the
frigid abstraction called the ' pure ' intellect, but includes
1 I am not here concerned with the intra -psychological questions as to the
number and nature of the psychic 'elements,' as to whether special volitional
or affective processes must be recognised in psychology. For the question
cannot be answered until it has been settled what is to be the purpose of the
psychological description. Like all conceptions, the meaning and validity of
those of psychology are relative to the use to which they are put, and in the
abstract they have only potential meaning. As Dr. Stout well puts it (p. 10),
one "cannot be right or wrong without reference to some interest or purpose,"
and before bespeaking their readers' attention for the details of their classifications,
psychologists should above all make it clear zvhat they propose to do with them.
Now I do not doubt that it is quite possible, and for certain purposes even con-
venient, to devise descriptions in purely intellectual terms, which entirely dispense
with the conceptions of volition, of agency, and even of feeling. Only of course it
must not be imagined that any such descriptions are final and sacrosanct. They
are purely methodological, and their validity extends as far as their usefulness.
And the question arises whether they can be used for a purpose like that which
we have in view. If not, we are entitled to describe differently. For it cannot
be too soon or too strongly emphasised that there is no intrinsic or absolute
truth or falsehood about any of our assumptions, apart from the manner of
their working.
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 87
and satisfies the will and emotions, so the corresponding
unity of the cosmos will not be a purely intellectual
formality (such as every world must possess ex vi
definitionis), but a complete harmony of our whole
* ' „,|„ ,T_ 1 1 -fin 1 ■ -i -r-r
experience.
§ 25. It is a curious fact that in passing from the
a priori to the postulate we can appeal to the authority
of the same Kant whose characteristic doctrine of an
independent theory of knowledge we have been compelled
to reject For Kant, in accordance with his peculiar
greatness, which his critics' very criticisms have ever
recoiled to recognise, became partly and tardily aware
of the fatal error of his intellectualism and of the
impossibility of accommodating the whole of life on
the basis prescribed by the Critique of Pure Reason.
After constructing for the ' Pure Reason ' a fearful and
wonderful palace of varieties, full of dungeons for
insoluble antinomies, dispossessed sciences and incarcer-
ated ideals, haunted and pervaded by the sombre mystery
of the Noiimenon, he came upon the problem of practical
life and found himself unable to organise the moral order
similarly, i.e. without reference to the demands which we
make upon experience.
Hence he was constrained to rationalise conduct by the
assumption of ethical postulates, which boldly encroached
and trespassed on the forbidden domain of the unknowable,
and returned thence laden with rich spoil — God, Freedom,
and Immortality.
This achievement is too often underrated, because
it seems to have cost Kant so little — merely a decree
for the creation of one more hardly-noticed addition to
the lengthy list of faculties, yclept the Practical Reason,
conjured into existence ad hoc, and apparently as
obedient as the rest to her author's word.
But in reality the consequences of enunciating the
principle of the postulate are far more momentous, and
with a little reflection, it soon appears that Kant has
evoked a force which he cannot curb or confine within
the borders of his system. The immediate consequence
88 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
of admitting ethical postulates which outflank the
' critical ' negations of the Pure Reason, is a conflict
between the Pure Reason, which had denied the
possibility of knowing the subjects of the Postulates, and
the Practical Reason, which insists that we must
practically believe and act on these tabooed dogmas.
Kant essays indeed to delimitate an arbitrary and
unscientific frontier between their domains, based upon
psychologically untenable hairsplitting between knowledge
and belief,1 but the most indulgent reader cannot but feel
that the dualism of the Pure and the Practical Reason
is intolerable and their antagonism irreconcilable, while
the dual character which this doctrine imposes upon Kant
as both the Cerberus and Herakles of the Noiimenal
world is calculated to bring ridicule both upon him and
upon his system.
In view of this fundamental incongruity between the
organising principles of knowledge and action, one of
two expedients had to be adopted. The first is that
preferred by the main body of Kantians to whom the true
and epochmaking Kant is the writer of the first Critique.2
They regarded the Practical Reason as a bit of a joke
and accounted for Kant's subsequent recantation of his
• critical ' results either wittily like Heine,3 or dully, like
— but no ! too many have written on the subject for me
to mention names !
The faithful few who tried to balance themselves in
the unstable equilibrium of Kant's actual position, who
believed his assurances as to the supremacy of the
Practical over the Theoretic Reason and its speculative
impotence, were left in a sad perplexity. They accepted
the dogma, without venturing to define it, and were
1 How can one prevent one's knowledge and one's belief from affecting each
other? If we think at all, either the knowledge will render impossible the prac-
tical belief, or a conviction will arise that a belief we constantly act on , which
permeates our whole being and never fails us, is true. Personally indeed I
should say that such was the origin and ratification of all truth. Conversely,
a belief which is foredoomed to remain a mere belief soon ceases to be acted
on, i.e. to be a belief in any real sense at all. The history of religions is full
of deplorable examples.
2 Or rather of its dominant doctrine.
3 Philosophic in Deutschland.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 89
troubled with an uneasy consciousness that it would not
bear thinking out.
Even here, however, there was a notable exception.
Fichte, with the enterprise and courage of youth, took
the Practical Reason seriously in hand, and combining
the doctrine of its supremacy with Kant's hints as to a
common root of the two Reasons,1 proceeded to posit
the Self as an ' absolutes Sollenl whence were to be
deduced both the Not -Self and the practical and
theoretical activities. The whole construction of the
Wissenschaftslehre, however, proceeds in a two? virepovpd-
vco<i which is too high for my humbler and concreter
purpose — I mention it merely as a partial anticipation
of the second and sounder way of conceiving the
relations of the Practical and the Theoretical Reason to
which I now proceed.
It is impossible to acquiesce in Kant's compromise
and to believe by the might of the Practical Reason in
what the Theoretic Reason declares to be unknowable.
For if the suprasensible and noumenal does not really
exist, it is both futile and immoral to tell us to believe
in it on moral grounds ; the belief in it is an illusion,
and will fail us in the hour of our direst need. If the
belief in the postulates is to have any moral or other
value, it must first of all be used to establish the reality of
the objects in which we are bidden to believe. We cannot
act as if the existence of God, freedom, and immortality
were real, if at the same time we know that it is hopelessly
inaccessible and indemonstrable. We must therefore
choose ; we must either trust the Theoretical or the
Practical Reason (unless, indeed, we are to conclude
with the sceptic that both alike are discredited by their
conflict). *
If we choose to abide by the former, the undeniable
fact of the moral consciousness will not save the postulates
of the Practical Reason from annihilation. It may postu-
late as it pleases, as pathetically or ridiculously as it
likes, its desire shall not be granted to it, and it will
4 E.g. in the introduction to the Critique of Judgment.
90 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
prove nothing. By postulating the inadmissible it merely
discredits itself. To the plea that the moral life must
live and feed upon the substance of unverifiable hopes,
Science must ruthlessly reply "je rien vols pas la necessite."
If then the moral life demands freedom, and freedom be
an impossibility, the moral life must inexorably be crushed ;
Kant is der Alles-zermalmende, as Heine thought, and
nothing more.
If on the other hand the Practical Reason be really
the higher, if it really has the right to postulate and
ethical postulates are really valid, then we really stand
committed to far more than Kant supposed. Postulation
must be admitted to be capable of leading to knowledge,
nay, perhaps even to amount to knowledge, and indeed
the thought will readily occur that it lies at the very
roots of knowledge. For of course postulation cannot
be confined to ethics. The principle, if valid, must be
generalised and applied all round to the organising
principles of our life. The Theoretic Reason will in this
case be rendered incapable of contesting the supremacy
of the Practical Reason by being absorbed by it and
shown to be derivative. Thus postulation is either not
valid at all, or it is the foundation of the whole theoretic
superstructure.
We stand committed, therefore, to the assertion that
in the last resort it is our practical activity that gives
the real clue to the nature of things, while the world as
it appears to the Theoretic Reason is secondary— a view
taken from an artificial, abstract and restricted standpoint,
itself dictated by the Practical Reason and devised for
the satisfaction of its ends.
But to carry through this programme the price must
be paid. The Critique of Pure Reason must be not
merely revised, but re-written. It must be re-written in
the light of the principle of the Postulate. Or as Prof.
Ward has excellently put it, Kant's three Critiques must
be combined into one.1 The simplest thing of all,
however, is to proceed independently to show in what
1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 133. The whole passage is admirable.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 91
manner our fundamental axioms are postulated, now
that we may be held to have exhibited the necessity of
the principle and its historical justification.1
IV
§ 26. We have already incidentally discovered some
of the chief characteristics of the Postulate, such as its
universality and necessity (S 11), its experimental char-
acter (§§ 5, 8, 11), its psychological origin from practical
needs, its function in holding together the intellectual and
practical sides of our nature and developing the former
out of the latter (§§ 24, 25). But it will not be amiss to
consider some further points of a general character before
proceeding actually to trace the development of specimen
postulates into axioms.
The first point which perhaps will bear further
emphasis is that mere postulating is not in general enough
to constitute an axiom. The postulation is the expression
of the motive forces which impel us towards a certain
assumption, an outcome of every organism's unceasing
struggle to transmute its experience into harmonious and
acceptable forms. The organism cannot help postulating,
because it cannot help trying (§ 5), because it must act or
die, and because from the first it will not acquiesce in less
than a complete harmony of its experience. It therefore
needs assumptions it can act on and live by, which will
serve as means to the attainment of its ends. These
assumptions it obtains by postulating them in the hope
that they may prove tenable, and the axioms are thus the
outcome of a Will-to-believe which has had its way, which
has dared to postulate, and, as William James has so
superbly shown, has been rewarded for its audacity by
finding that the world granted what was demanded.2
1 For its relation to Aristotelianism, cf. the art. on ' Useless Knowledge ' in
Mind, N.S., No. 42.
2 Practical postulation is the real meaning of his much misconstrued doctrine
of the ' Will to believe.' It is not so much exhortation concerning what we ought
to do in the future as analysis of what we have done in the past. And the critics
of the doctrine have mostly ignored the essential addition to the ' will to believe,'
viz. ' at your risk,' which leaves ample scope for the testing of the assumed
belief by experience of its practical results.
V
92 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
But the world does not always grant our demands.
The course of postulation does not always run smooth.
We cannot tell beforehand whether, and to what extent, a
postulate can be made to work. Compliance with some
of our demands is only extorted from the refractory
material of our ' world,' by much effort and ingenuity and
repeated trial. In other cases the confirmation we seek
for remains incomplete, and the usefulness of the postulate
is proportionately restricted. Sometimes again we may
even be forced to desist from a postulate which proves
unworkable.
It follows that we may find postulates (or attempts
at such) in every stage of development. They may
rise from the crudest cravings of individual caprice to
universal desires of human emotion ; they may stop short
at moral, aesthetic, and religious postulates, whose validity
seems restricted to certain attitudes of mind, or aspects
of experience, or they may make their appeal to all
intelligence as such ; their use as principles of the various
sciences may be felt to be methodological, or they may
have attained to a position so unquestioned, useful, and
indispensable, in a word so axiomatic, that the thought of
their being conceived otherwise never enters our heads.
But even the most exalted of these apx0^ avairoheiKToi
T(av pr) ivSe^ofievwv aWcos e-^ecv differ from their humble
relatives in human wishes not in the mode of their genesis,
but in their antiquity, in the scope of their usefulness, in
the amount and character of the confirmation which they
have received in the course of experience, in a word, in
their working and not in their origin. They are the
successful survivors in the process of sifting or ' selection '
which has power also over the products of our intellectual
striving.
But it ill becomes them on this account to give them-
selves airs and to regard their position as immutable and
unassailable. For in many cases they retain their hold
over our affections only faute de mieux. They are the
best assumptions we can work with, but not the best we
can conceive. And some one may some day discover a
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 93
way to work with what are now unsupported postulates,
and so raise them to axiomatic rank. Thus whatever
axioms we may at any time employ are, and ever remain
relative to the nature of our desires and our experience,
and so long as changes may occur in either, inexhaustible
possibilities of corresponding developments must be ad-
mitted in the list of our axiomatic principles. An
emotional postulate may become the guiding principle of
a new science, a methodological principle may become
superfluous and be discarded or be superseded by a better,
a primitive desire may die down and cease to nourish a
postulate, nay even a full blown axiom may be conceived
as becoming otiose under changed conditions of experience.
While our empiricism is thus too radical, and our
trust in experience too honest, to permit our theory to
assign to any axiom an absolutely indefeasible status,
we must yet admit that practically the possibility of
modifying them is one that may safely be neglected.
The great axioms or postulates are so ineradicably
intertwined with the roots of our being, have so intim-
ately permeated every nook and cranny of our Weltan-
schauung, have become so ingrained in all our habits of
thought, that we may practically rely on them to stand
fast so long as human thought endures. For apart from
the fact that it would be gratuitous to suppose a revolution
in our experience sufficient to upset them, they are
protected by our laziness. To think always costs an
effort, and the effort of thought required to undo the
structure of mind which has grown up with the ages
would be so gigantic that we should shrink with a
shudder from the very thought thereof. And all for
the sake of what ? Merely to show that the mental
order was constructed bit by bit by postulation and
might be constructed otherwise ! And would it not be
sheer insanity to upset the authority of the axioms in use
unless we were prepared to substitute others of superior
value? There is therefore in general little prospect of
revolutionary plots against the validity of axioms. The
enterprise would too much resemble an attempt by a coral
94 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
polyp to cut itself adrift from its reef and to start de
novo. So we do as the corals do and build on the
corpses of our ancestors, hoping that if they were right
we also shall profit by following suit, that if they were
wrong, the consciousness of our wrongness will at least be
borne in upon us with a less painful promptitude than if
we had set out to go wrong on our own account.
§ 27. It follows as a matter of course, and will
readily be comprehended, that, if our axioms have the
origin alleged, if postulation pervades our whole mental
life and forms the nisus formalivus of mental development,
no exhaustive, or even systematic, table of axioms can,
or need, be drawn up. In principle their number and
nature must depend on our experience and psychical
temperament. They will radiate from human personality
as their centre, and their common service in ministering
to its needs will bestow upon them sufficient unity to
debar us from attempts to force them into artificial
systems which at best can result only in sham ' deduc-
tions ' of the rational necessity of the actual, while
making no provision for the possibilities of future
development.
We may therefore absolve ourselves from the supposed
duty of giving a 'deduction of the categories,' or even
an exhaustive list of axioms and postulates. This is
the more fortunate as it justifies us in considering only
such select specimens of the growth of postulates and
their development into axioms, as may suffice to illustrate
the principle, or prove particularly interesting, and enables
us to save much time and spare much weariness.
V
§ 28. Which of our fundamental axioms I select
therefore, does not matter much, any more than the
order in which they are treated ; but as I am anxious
not to incur the charge of shirking difficulties, I shall
begin with tracing the genesis of one which is perhaps
the most difficult, as it is certainly one of the most
n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 95
fundamental and axiomatic— viz. the basis of all thinking
in the strict sense of the term, the. Principle of Identity.
Not, of course, that I propose to derive it out of
nothing. 1 must entirely disavow the Hegelian (or hyper-
Hegelian ?) ambition of conjuring all Being into existence
out of Not-being by a Dialectical Process working in
vacuo ; I have not even got the whole of concrete reality
up my sleeve to insinuate bits thereof into my conclusions,
whenever and wherever my reader's attention has been
relaxed by some tortuous obscurity of argumentation. I
prefer honestly to start from what may be taken to be, so
far as psychology can describe it, matter of psychical fact.
For I hold that epistemological speculation like every
other, must take something factual for granted, if it is not
to be vain imagining, and defy those who contest my
presuppositions to state the alternatives they are in a
position to offer. If on this account a claim be advanced
that my initial basis of psychical fact is a priori, that is,
prior to the axiom to be derived, I make no objection.
I am content that it should be called so, if the phrase
comforts anybody, and if I am permitted to point out (1)
that such priority is only relative, pro hac vice, and for the
purposes of the present inquiry, (2) it is admitted to lie
below the level of what can properly be called thought.
For I wish to make it quite plain that the psychical fact
from which I propose to start, is on what I may perhaps
best call the sentient level of consciousness, i.e. involves only
a consciousness which feels pleasure and pain, which
strives and desires without as yet clear self-consciousness
or coitception of objects.
In so doing, I assume, of course, the existence of
consciousness or sentiency as a datum, and abstain from
the alluring expedient of conducting my whole plea on
the more concrete plane of biological discussion, obvious
and seductive as it might appear to start thence and to
argue (1) that the genesis — by a so-called 'accidental
variation ' — of the concomitance of psychical with
physical process was of great survival-value to the lump
of matter which first happened to find itself alive and
96 F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
ass
dimly conscious ; (2) that subsequently great advantages
accrued to organisms in which these mental processes
cohered and coalesced and became continuous and
centralised, until they culminated in self-consciousness.
There is a fatal facility and engaging modernity about
arguments of this sort, and they bring out an important
aspect of the truth. For it is not too much to say, that
every step in the development of our axioms, including
even the steps hypothetically conceived to precede con-
sciousness, could be plausibly formulated in terms of
survival-value. But though it might be easy in this way
to enlist the support of the biologically-minded, I prefer
to conduct the argument on a higher and more philo-
sophic plane, in order to avoid even the appearance of
the varepov Trporepov which is inevitably involved in
every derivation of consciousness.
In assuming consciousness, moreover, we are bound to
assume also the characteristic features whereby it is
psychologically described, e.g. its continuity, coherence,
conativeness, and purposiveness. It should be observed
further that in pointing out these characteristics of
consciousness, we are not attempting to define
consciousness. For why should we court failure by
propounding an inevitably inadequate formula, to contain
and constrain that which embraces all existence,
generates all formulas, uses them and casts them aside in
its victorious development ? Whoever is possessed of
consciousness himself will recognise to what in him
the description of consciousness refers ; unless he were
capable of this, the most exhaustive definitions would
impinge on him in vain and without conveying a glimmer
of meaning. That consciousness is a psychic fact
therefore I shall assume ; what it is, I must leave to my
reader's own consciousness to inform him. I have then
in consciousness a ttov <ttco of psychic fact beyond which
we neither can nor need go.
Nor I think need we allow the objection to perturb
us that our present conception of consciousness may be
miserably inadequate. In view of its continuing develop-
n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 97
rnent in the course of experience the suggestion is
probably true ; but we do not need the adequate concep-
tion of consciousness, which could be reached only in the
seventh heaven, and there might have become superfluous.
And in any case our ignorance of what the ulterior
development of consciousness may portend, is no reason
for refusing to recognise in it the actual features which
are relevant to our purpose. V
S 29. Now among the factual features implicit in all
consciousness, though perhaps hard to distinguish in its
lower forms and not as yet completely expressed in any
that we have so far reached, is an identical self — or what
we are subsequently able so to designate. By this I do
not of course mean anything lofty and metaphysical, but
merely a convenient description of certain psychical facts.
I have no quarrel with the psychologists who argue
against an antiquated view of futile and unknowable soul-
substance, and insist that the only self they can recognise
is just the implicit ' owning ' of all conscious processes.
If the coherence and continuity of conscious processes
can under the proper conditions develop into explicit
self- consciousness, that is enough ; and so long as the
psychologists are able and eager to tell us all about the
psychogenesis of the self, I see no reason why their
accounts should not be referred to with gratitude and
respect.
But my problem is not one of origin, but of the origin
of validity ; i.e. assuming this conscious self to have been
developed, I have to trace out how it proceeds to the
conception and postulation of identity. The felt self- ,
identity of consciousness, which, however it arises, is a
psychical fact, is, I contend, the ultimate psychical basis
for raising the great postulate of logical identity, which is
the first and greatest of the principles of discursive thought
and introduces order into the chaos of presentations and
analyses the avy/ce-xyiievov of primitive experience.
Now this achievement is not a ' necessity of pure
thought' so much as of practical life; and without postula-
tion it would remain impossible. The unceasing flow of
is*
■J
98
F. C. S. SCHILLER
11
like impressions by itself would not suggest the recurrence
of what has preserved its identity in change ; nor would
even its felt likenesses suffice to engender a perception
of identity.1 To obtain identity we must first desire it
and demand it ; and this demand, though it would be
impossible if we did not feel ourselves to be identical
selves and fruitless if we could not discover such around
us, is a distinct step beyond anything given in passive
experiencing.
Thus the conception of identity is a free creation of a
postulating intelligence which goes beyond its experience
to demand the satisfaction of its desires. But it must
have been the felt sameness of the continuous conscious
life that suggested the clue to the recognition of the same
in the recurrence of the like.
~\ 30. Edwin meets Angelina in her winter furs whom
he admired last summer in fig leaves ; he recognises her
identity in the differences of her primitive attire. That
such things as the persistence of identity through change
should be, and what they mean, he could learn only from
the immediate experience of his own identity. That they
are is his postulate, a postulate that fills his heart with the
delicious hope that Angelina will smile on him as be-
witchingly as before. Why should I introduce sordidness
into this romance, by dwelling also on the coarsely
practical advantages of recognising objects in one's sur-
roundings ?
Yet it is surely plain that the recognition of the same
amid variety of circumstance is advantageous ; and if
desiring it to be true, because he felt his whole happiness
depended on it, Edwin made bold to postulate it, he well
deserved the rich rewards which poured in as an over-
whelming experience of its working confirmed his postulate.
1 It seems to me clear that psychologically perception of likeness is ultimate,
anterior to identity, and incapable of being reduced to it. The analysis of likeness
into ' partial identity ' is a logical procedure which occurs when we manipulate
the psychical fact with a logical purpose and try to conceive the likeness. But
then conception is admittedly a matter of thought, and thought rests on the
principle of identity. What the tautology of the Hegelian definition ( ' identity
is identity in difference') is struggling to express (or conceal?) is really the use of
logical conception in manipulating the felt likenesses. Cf. the discussion in
Mind between Prof. James and Mr. Bradley (N.S., Nos. 5-8).
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES
99
We, of course are far removed from the scene of this
primitive idyll, and have long since ceased to notice what
a postulate identity was, and for the matter of that still
is. We need a world of philosophic quibbling to bring
before our eyes the fact that strict identity never yet
was found by land or sea, but is always and everywhere
a construction of our mind, made by voluntary concentration
on the essential and rejection of the irrelevant.1
Nor, of course, did Edwin know this. He had pos-
tulated under the impulsion of practical need, without
knowing what he did. The enormity of the logical
consequences of his act was hidden from him and only
gradually revealed. Still less did Angelina know that
she had become the mate of the first animal rationale.
Edwin, again, could not foresee that his original
postulate would not suffice, and that stupendous efforts
of abstraction were still before him if he would complete
the postulate of identity and attain to the purity of its
present logical use.
In recognising Angelina he had of course (although
he realised it not) construed her identity upon the model
of his own. But the concrete given identity of self-
consciousness is a slender basis for the construction of
the logical ideal ; indeed it even proves unequal to the
requirements of a social life, and needs on this account to
be sublimated and idealised into a concept that transcends
the given.
The concretely identical, alas, changes in the flow of
differences ! Edwin has grown bald and Angelina
wrinkled, and I grieve to say, they often quarrel. They
are no longer what they were when each succumbed to
the other's charms, and identity seems dubious and a
fraud. Ehen fugaces Postume I Postulate I The cure is
a hair of the dog that bit you. Edwin must postulate j
once more, must postulate a more permanent self which I
rises superior to such mischances of a mortal life, and,
1 If identity were ever found. Dr. Hodder's amusing strictures (Adversaries
of the Sceptic, pp. 116-117) on Mr. Bradley's "identity of indiscernibles " would
be fatal to every use of the principle.
ioo F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
ever at its best, feeds on ambrosia and drains the nectared
cups with changeless gods !
Gods, did I escape my own notice saying? What
are gods and how do they arise ? As men, but greater !
Projections of ideals which the actual suggests, but seems
to trample under foot ! The sign-posts clearly point to
the religious postulates and a track which here diverges
from our own.
§ 31. For though it would be fascinating to trace
the course of postulation to which religious concep-
tions owe their birth, we must follow the dry and dusty
road of logical postulation by whose side the hardiest
flowers of the boldest rhetoric can scarce contrive to
blossom. A constant and unchanging self is needed
not merely to satisfy what subsequently develops into
the religious instinct, but also in order to yield a trust-
worthy standard of comparison for the purposes of
everyday life. If Edwin likes his mammoth steak well
done to-day and underdone to-morrow, no woman can
live with him. A stable standard of reference in our
judgments is an urgent practical need. Hence the ideal
of absolute identity begins to dawn upon the logical
horizon, and it is recognised that the possibility of mean-
ing depends on its constancy, and that perfect constancy
could be realised only by perfect knowledge.
And, not otherwise, recognition leads on to cognition,
and cognition to the same postulate of conceptual identity
or constancy. The process which took the recurrence of
a similar presentation to mean that of the same individual,
will bear extension to the resemblances of natural kinds.
From recognising individuals we proceed to recognise
species, a task made easier by the psychological careless-
ness which overlooks individual differences.1 Now every
step in this process is a training in abstraction. At first
even Edwin could not recognise his Angelina without
divesting her (in thought) of her enveloping differences.
1 It is conceivable, indeed, that this process actually preceded in practical
urgency, and therefore, in time, the recognition of individuality. But that would
not impair the argument, for under some conditions the discrimination of
individuals is unnecessary and all individuals are practically the same.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 101
But by the time he can discern in their manifold disguises
the surrounding objects that are useful or dangerous, he
has a pretty sound working control of that weapon of
analysis which we now call the principle of identity.
No doubt it still is, and long remains, an evvKov etSo?
— pure logic not becoming needful so soon as pure
mathematics — but sooner or later some one was sure to
ask what was this universal ' man ' which was so glibly
predicated of white, black, yellow, and brown. And then
of course the vkrj would be in the fire, and a bloodless
ballet of philosophers would commence to dance round
the unearthly conflagration.
S 32. I forgot to mention, by the way, that soon after
recognising identity in Angelina, Edwin had (of course)
invented language. As to why the expression of his
emotions on that prehistoric occasion resulted in the
euphonious sound of " Angelina," he can indeed state
nothing intelligible. But by association's artful aid he
got into the habit of venting this utterance whenever he
saw her. And then one morning he not only said it,
but meant it ! Prodigious ! the sound had become a
symbol ! It puzzled him very much, and he had that,
until then, unheard-of thing, a nervous headache, for
three days afterwards, which puzzled him still more.
He put it down to daemonic inspiration (a notable advance
in theology !) and went on thinking. Then he proceeded
to instruct Angelina, and after a painful process (to her !)
got her to answer to her name. And, behold, when their
children were born they all learned to talk, i.e. to apply
similar and identifiable sounds to an indefinite plurality
of similar objects. Which, of course, in those days was
an immense advantage. And ever since the children of
men have been the only anthropoids that could talk and
impart ideas — whether they had them or not !
All this happened such a very long time ago that I
cannot exactly tell you when, and have had (like Plato)
to make a myth of it. Whether in so doing I have not
condensed into a single myth what was really the gradual
achievement of manv generations of mortals it were
io2 F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
pedantic to inquire. The illustration serves, I hope, to
! bring out the main point, viz. that the affirmation of
identity, without which there is neither thought nor
judgment, is essentially an act of postulation (more oj-
/ess consciously felt to be such) which presupposes as its
psychological conditio sine qua non the feeling of the self-
identity and 'unity' of consciousness.
§33- The derivation of identity I have sketched also
goes some way, I think, to explain why in real life men
so long enjoyed immunity from the ravages of the predi-
cation puzzle. Identity being a practical postulate,
modelled on the immediacy of . felt self-identity, the
postulation of absolute conceptual identity developed very
slowly, and there never was any practical danger lest the
meaning of the postulate should be pressed into a form
calculated to defeat its original purpose. The inherence
of attributes in a substance, the relation of a thing to its
qualities, are not as such practical problems, and the
difficulties which the intellectual play of reflective idlers
has discovered in them did not exist in practice. In
practice the meaning of terms was defined by their use,
and the will-o'-the-wisp of a ' truth ' dissevered from
utility had not yet been permitted to frustrate the very
instinct of which it claimed to be the loftiest satisfaction,
nor to eviscerate the conception of ' truth ' of its real
meaning.
And so tacit convention kept the identity postulated
true to a sense that allowed of the possibility of predi-
cation.
Hence that 5 should be 5 and yet also P, nay that it
could be P, just because it was primarily S, seemed no
more remarkable than that the self which was glutted
with beef yesterday should to-day be hungry, and just
because of this identity, should prepare once more to
assume the predicate of ' beef-eater.' It would be vain
therefore to impose on the logic of postulation with
bogies of an identity excluding differences ; the calm
reply would be that postulates need not, and must not, be
pressed beyond the point at which they fulfil their
,i AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 103
purpose. An interpretation of identity therefore which
\
excluded predication would stultify our supreme purpose
in reasoning as completely as a failure to identify, and
would therefore be invalid.
And yet we should be equally stern in resisting the
allurements to evade the difficulty by relaxing the
strictness with which identity is postulated in every valid
argument. To the objection that ' abstract identity '
would be the death of predication, because if A were I
perfectly and unalterably A it could never become any-
thing else, the answer is plain. Abstract identity is never
found, but has always to be made. It is made, there-
fore, in whatever way and to whatever extent it is needed,
and remains subservient to the purpose of its maker. It is
a postulated ideal which works, though nature never quite
conforms to it ; before it could be fully realised, the need to
which it ministers, the necessity of unceasing predication
which is forced upon us by the Becoming of the world,
would have had to pass away ; and once we had transcended
change, identity, together with the processes of discursive
thinking which are built upon it, might safely be added to
the weapons discarded by the spirit in its advance towards
perfection. But as a matter of fact identity continues to
be useful just because it continues to be a postulate which
never is fully realised. It may therefore blandly be
admitted that A is A is an impotent truism, so long as it
is vividly realised that A shall be A is an active truth that
remoulds the world.
§34. It is in its limitations, perhaps, that the postu-
latory nature of the principle of identity, and of the
conceptual use of mental imagery based on it, appears
most clearly. For, as has already been remarked, there
ever remains a discrepancy between the identity of the
real and the logical ideal, a discrepancy to which we have
grown accustomed, a discrepancy on which the use
of the concept depends, but which, indubitably, renders
identity a postulate rather than a ' law.'
For in strict fact nothing ever is, everything becomes,
and turns our most conscientious predications into false-
u
io4 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
hoods. The real is here, there, and everywhere, until we
stop breathless in our chase and point, gasping. The
' eternal truths,' unable to sustain the pace, have long
ceased to reside with us — if indeed they ever gladdened us
with theophanies even in the Golden Age of Plato — and
have gone down or up (one really cannot be precise about
astronomical directions in these Copernican days) into the
T07T0? voijtos, where it is possible to preserve one's
dignity without doing any work. In their stead we have
craftily devised conventions, such as that becoming shall
mean being, and that for our purposes relative identity may,
under the proper precautions, serve as well as absolute.
But we stand unalterably committed to the postulate that
identity there shall be, though everywhere we have to
make it and by force to fit it on the facts. And so we
get on very nicely with truths, as with dresses, that last
only for the occasion or for a season, and console ourselves
with visions that in the end Being will absorb Becoming
and impermanence cease from troubling and predication
be completely true and unchanging and perfect and
categorical. If by that time we have outgrown the very
need of predication, it does not matter to us now ; for
nothing of the sort is likely to happen to any of us for
ever so long !
VI
§3 5- The myth of Edwin and Angelina has reminded
me (perchance by avd/u,vi]ai<;) of another of still more
ancient date, and if I have obtained forgiveness for
telling so much about them, I may venture to relate the
story of another being whose name was Grumps. Or
rather, that would have been his name, if names had then
been invented. I cannot quite say who or what Grumps
was, but he lived ever so long ago and was very stupid,
very nearly as stupid as everybody else. He was so
stupid that he did not know the difference between himself
and other people, but still in his muddled way — he lived,
I fancy, in the slime at the bottom of the sea — he wanted
to be happy, though he did not know himself nor what
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 105
his happiness could be. But one day (or night — it does
not really matter which it was, — because there was no light)
he made a mistake and got outside a jagged flint stone
which he could not digest. It hurt him very much and
he nearly died. But ever after his agony Grumps knew
the difference between himself and other people, and
whenever anything hurt him or happened not to his liking
(which was very often) he put it down to the other people.
For he felt sure he would never hurt himself. And it
made such a difference to his way of living that he grew
very big and fat. But everybody else was too stupid to
know why.
Which fable, being translated into the decent obscurity
of technical language, means that the ' external ' world is
a postulate, made to extrude inharmonious elements from
consciousness, de jure if not de facto, in order to avoid
ascribing them to the nature of the self. Not of course,
that this is at first consciously so argued, or that the
segregation of the two poles of the experience -process
into Self and Not- Self need be conceived as arising
otherwise than pari passu. But we may conceive that
it is the felt unsatisfactoriness of experience which sug-
gests the differentiation of Subject and Object and pos-
tulation of the latter as an alien ' Other,' causing the
unsatisfactoriness.
The advantage and the confirmation are obvious as
before. And if any one will not believe me, let him go
to bed and dream ; he will find that there too he projects
his dream world from himself and ascribes to it externality,
just because, and in so far as, he is baffled by an experi-
ence he cannot control. 1 «-
Contrariwise it may be conjectured that if we got to .- j
heaven (having forgotten our whole past) and found that >'
everything took exactly the course desired, no sense of
the ' otherness ' of our experience could grow up. We
should either suppose that we were almighty, that every-
thing was what it was because we desired it, or we should
cease to make the distinction between self and ' other,'
i.e. should cease to be self-conscious.
*
<f
io6 F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
8 36. The postulatory aspect of other important
axioms I must pass over lightly. The principle of
Contradiction may be taken as simply the negative side
• of that of Identity ; in demanding that A shall be itself,
we demand also that it shall be capable of excluding
whatever threatens its identity. Applied to propositions,
it demands that we shall be enabled to avoid the jar of
incongruous judgments ; but the volitional nature of this
demand is clearly attested by the frequency with which
contradictions are de facto entertained by minds which
either do not allow them to come into actual conflict, or
actually enjoy the conflict. The Principle of Excluded
Middle similarly, demands that it shall be possible to
make distinctions sharp and disjunctions complete, in
order that we may thereby tame the continuous flux of
experiences. But in both these cases (as before) our
postulates are not precise transcriptions of fact ; they are
valid because they work, because nature can be made to
conform to them, even though not wholly. They derive
therefore their real meaning and true validity from the
fact that they are applicable to experience, that incom-
patibles and strict alternatives are met with, that contrary
and exclusive attributes are found.
§37- I may here call attention to the fact that in
scientific research the postulatory procedure of our intel-
ligence is displayed in the formation of Hypotheses. A
hypothesis is a suggestion we assume and (however
tentatively) act on, in order to see whether it will work.
It always proceeds from some degree of psychological
interest ; for about that in which no one is interested
no one frames even the most fleeting hypothesis. A
real hypothesis therefore is never gratuitous ; it is pur-
posive and aims at the explanation of some subject.
In other words it presupposes a desire for its explana-
tion and is framed so as to satisfy that desire. The
desire for an answer stimulates us to put the question to
nature and nature to the question.1 We assume, that is,
that the hypothesis is true, because it would be satisfactory
1 Or, as Lady Welby says, it is the pressure of the answer that puts the question.
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 107
if it were, and then we try and see whether it is workable.
If it is not, we are more or less disappointed, but try
again ; if it is, it rapidly rises to be the theory of the
phenomena under investigation, and may under favourable
circumstances attain to axiomatic value for the purposes
of the inquiry. A good example of this is afforded by
the conception of Evolution. This originated as a wild
hypothesis suggested by remote analogies ; in the hands
of Darwin it became a theory which correlated a vast
number of facts ; and now its usefulness is so universally
recognised that it is accepted without discussion as a
methodological axiom which guides research in all the
sciences concerned with the history of events.
Now the fundamental part played by Hypothesis in
the discovery of new truth is being more and more plainly
admitted by logicians. Novelty neither arises by formal
ratiocination in vacuo, as an apriorist logic seemed to
imply, nor yet is it spontaneously generated by the mere
congregation of facts, as logical empiricism strove to
maintain. Facts must be interpreted by intelligence, but
intelligence always operates upon the basis of previously
established fact. The growth of knowledge is an active
assimilation of the new by the old. Or in other words,
our hypotheses are suggested by, and start from, the facts
of already established knowledge, and then are tested by
experience. We confront them with the new and dubious
facts and try to work with them ; and upon the results of
this trial their ultimate fate depends.
Now this is exactly what we have seen to be our
procedure in postulating. We must start from a psychical
experience which suggests the postulate ( = the previous
fact suggesting the hypothesis) ; we must use the postulate
(or hypothesis) as a means to an end which appears
desirable ; we must apply the postulate to experience (a
postulate and a hypothesis not capable of and not in-
tended for use are alike invalid) ; and the final validity of
the postulate (or hypothesis) depends on the extent
to which experience can be rendered congruous with it.
May we not infer that the use of Hypothesis in the
1
io8 F. C. S. SCHILLER
n
logic of induction confirms our assertion of the postu-
latory origin of axioms ? Is it not the same process
which now yields fresh truth which we supposed to have
been active from the first and to have laid the foundations
of knowledge ? And if it can now establish the validity
of the truths it elicits, why should it not first of all have
established its own validity by establishing the validity of
our fundamental axioms ?
§ 38. The principle of Causation again is pretty
plainly a postulate. Causation, as James says,1 is an
altar to an unknown god, a demand for something, we
know not what, that shall enable us to break up and
to control the given course of events. Now this demand
may be satisfied in various ways at different times and
for various purposes, in a manner which greatly conduces
to the vitality of controversy. Historically, our original
model for constructing the conception of cause is our
immediate experience in moving our limbs, on the basis
of which the far-famed ' necessary connection ' — which at
bottom is only the conceptual translation of the feeling
of ' having to ' — is postulated. This primitive conception
of causation, however, does not prove adequate for all
our later purposes, especially when, as is usually the
case, it is misunderstood and mismanaged. So we
proceed to other formulations of causality, which, however,
are no less clearly dependent on our experiences and
relative to our purposes. ' Cause ' means identity when
we wish to construct the equations of physics and
mechanics ; it means regular succession when we are
content to view phenomena from without ; it involves
real agency when, as rarely occurs on the plane of the
natural sciences,'2 we desire to grasp the motive forces
of phenomena from within. Every event shall have a
cause — -in order that we may be able to produce it or
to check its production. Similarly the principle of
1 Principles of Psychology, ii. p. 671.
2 The possible exception is biology, in which the Darwinian method'Jputs
difficulties into the way of regarding organisms as automata whose psychic life
may be neglected. For if psychic activity has no causal efficacy, why was it
developed in a world controlled by the law of struggle for existence?
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 109
sufficient Reason demands that everything shall be
capable of reasoned connection with all things — i.e. we
decline to live among disjecta membra of a universe.
How intensely postulatory these axioms are, is best
seen when we consider what is too often neglected, viz.
the limits of their use. The unchanging is the uncaused ;
no reason is required for that which is 'self-evident.'
But, psychologically, everything is self-evident which
provokes no question, and what alone would be absolutely
self-evident would be the absolutely satisfactory. Thus
the only complete logical truth would be one which left
no room for further questions by reason of its absolute
psychological satisfactoriness. And conversely nothing
arouses the questioning spirit more readily than the
unsatisfactory. As has well been said, there is a problem
of evil, but not of good. It is precisely in so far, there-
fore, as experience is unsatisfactory that we have need
of a principle of Sufficient Reason. It has to be left,
with so much of the panoply of practical life, at the
gates of Heaven.
Comprehended as a postulate, therefore, the principle
of Sufficient Reason no longer exercises an unsympathis-
ing tyranny of pure reason over reluctant desires ; it does
not drive us to seek for reasons that can never satisfy
without end ; it only enables us to assign a reason when-
ever we will, and the situation seems to us to need one.
The \v(ri<; of the airopla of the infinite regress of
causes is similar. It means " you may go back as far
as ever you will " ; it does not mean " you must go back,
whether you will or not." As for the unchanging (or what
is taken to be such) the causal demand has no power
over it ; it has no cause because it has no changes with
which it is practically necessary to grapple.
§ 39- Upon the assumption of the existence of
universal laws of nature, otherwise known as the Uni-
formity of Nature, I may bestow a somewhat fuller
treatment, for reasons which can perhaps be conjectured
by those of my readers who have been engaged in
philosophic instruction.
1 IO
F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
To primitive man — we may suppose ourselves to have
got down to semi-historical times — nature inevitably still
appears very chaotic and uncomfortable. He desires an
explanation of the circumstances that oppress him, and
is prepared to clutch at any straw. He partially gratifies
this desire by projecting as the ' causes ' of such happen-
ings ' spirits ' naturally and necessarily conceived ex
analogia hominis, and wild and malevolent enough to
account for the chaos and the discomfort.
But after all the chaos is not complete ; it is inter-
spersed with gleams of uniformity. Though under the
promptings of misplaced paternal pride, Helios may
conceivably entrust his chariot to the unpractised hands
of Phaethon, yet within the memory of the oldest in-
habitant the sun has risen and set with regularity. So
too a number of organic rhythms, breathing, cardiac
pumping, digestion, hunger, etc., have by this time reached
a regularity which can hardly be overlooked. There is
therefore no lack of psychical experience to suggest
regularity, and the whole force of association, driving the
mind into habitual courses, disposes it to expect a re-
currence of the familiar.
Perfect regularity, therefore, can be postulated ; and
the temptation to do so is great. For while no ameliora-
tion of man's miserable state can be expected from the
scientific caution that dares not step beyond the narrow
bounds of precedent, the postulation of universal laws is
fraught with infinite possibilities of power. If nature is
regular, it can be trusted ; the future will resemble the
past — at least enough to calculate it — and so our past
experience will serve as guide to future conduct. There
is, moreover, a glorious simplicity about calculating the
future by the assumption that out of the hurly-burly of
events in time and space may be extracted changeless
formulas whose chaste abstraction soars above all reference
to any ' where ' or ' when,' and thereby renders them
blank cheques to be filled up at our pleasure with any
figures of the sort. The only question is — Will Nature
honour the cheque ? Audentes Natura juvat — let us take
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES m
our life in our hands and try ! If we fail, our blood will
be on our own heads (or, more probably, in some one
else's stomach), but though we fail, we are in no worse
case than those who dared not postulate : uncompre-
hended chaos will engulf both them and us. If we
succeed, we have the clue to the labyrinth. Our as-
sumption, therefore, is at least a methodological necessity ;
it may turn out to be (or be near) a fundamental fact
in nature. We stand to lose nothing and to gain every-
thing by making a postulate which is both a practical
necessity and an obvious methodological assumption,
pointing out a way of investigating a subject with which
we must grapple, if we will to carry on the struggle which
is life.
Quid plura ? Experience has shown that Nature
condones our audacity, and step by step our assumption
has been confirmed. The ' reign of law ' has turned out
to be as absolute as ever we chose to make it, and our
assumption has worked wherever we have chosen to apply
it. Thus the speculations to which we were first driven
in the hungry teeth of savage facts by the slender hope
of profit, by the overpowering fear of the ruin which
stared us in the face, have slowly ceased to be speculative
and become the foundations of the ordinary everyday
business of life. Our postulates have grown respectable,
and are now entitled axioms.
§ 40. By way of a change I may pass to consider the
function of the postulate in a very different region, viz.
the construction of our conceptions of Space and Time,
"which since Kant it has become difficult not to treat of in
analogous fashion. In Kant, of course, it will be
remembered that they are treated as twin instances of
' pure ' ' intuition ' or 'perception ' (reine Anschauung) giving
rise to synthetic judgments a priori and needing to be
systematically distinguished both from perceptions ( Wahr-
nehmung) and from conceptions. Nevertheless it will
hardly escape an unprejudiced observer that a ' pure
intuition ' is strangely intermediate between a perception
and a conception.
ii2 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
Of this curious fact the explanation which I shall
venture to suggest is that in reality the reine Ansckauung
is a hermaphrodite, both perceptual and conceptual, and
that Kant's doctrine on the subject rests on a systematic
confounding of these two aspects. He argues first that
Space and Time cannot be perceptions by appealing to
their conceptual nature, and then that they cannot be
conceptions by appealing to their perceptual character.
So he has to construct the pure intuition as a third thing
which they may safely be, seeing that they can be neither
percepts nor concepts. But he has overlooked the
possible alternative that, as so often, the same word has
to do duty both for percept and concept, and that by
' Space ' and ' Time ' we mean now the one and now
the other. This ambiguity having escaped his notice,1
the result is that the whole doctrine of the Transcendental
^Esthetic is pervaded by a thorough-going confusion of
psychology and logic.
As against Kant, I shall contend that the nature of
Space and Time remains an inexhaustible source of
paradox and perplexity, unt'l it is recognised that in each
case what has happened has been that certain psycho-
logical data have been made the basis of conceptual con-
structions by a course of methodological postulation.
^"-h § 41. In the case of Space these psychological data
consist of the inherent extension or spatiality of the
perceptions of the senses of sight and ' touch ' ( =
pressure + muscular contraction + articular motion), in
consequence whereof we can no more perceive the un-
extended than (despite Kant) we can perceive empty
Space. These perceptual spaces are fused by the
necessities (needs) of practical life, which force us to
correlate the visual and tactile images of objects, into a
single perceptual or real space, in which we suppose
ourselves and all objective realities to be immersed.
Thus spatiality is a given attribute of the real world as
empirical originally as its colour or its weight.
1 The simplest and most flagrant proof of this is to be found in the fact that
Kant does not distinguish between the problems oi pure and applied geometry.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 113
But this real space is very far from being identical
with the space of the geometers. Geometrical space is
a conceptual construction founded upon space-perception
and aiming at the simplest system of calculating the
behaviour of bodies in real space — a matter obviously of
the greatest practical importance. Hence it is built up
by a series of postulates into an ideal structure which
at no point coincides with our perceptual space and in many
respects is even antithetical to it.
Thus it is commonly stated that ' Space ' (conceptual)
is one, empty, homogeneous, continuous, infinite, infinitely
divisible, identical, and invariable. Now every one of
these attributes is the product of an idealising con-
struction the purpose of which is to facilitate the inter-
pretation and manipulation of the movements of bodies in
real (physical or perceptual) space, which stands in the
sharpest contrast with our conceptual construction by
being many, filled, heterogeneous, continuous only for per-
ception (if atomism be true), probably finite,1 not infinitely
divisible (atoms again !) and variable.
And this is how and why we construct the qualities
of our ideal geometrical space. We make it one and
identical by correlating our sense-spaces, by fusing the
multitude of fields of vision and by refusing to recognise
the spaces of our dream experiences, in order that
we may have a common standard to which we can
refer all our space-perceptions. We make it empty
and invariable by abstracting from that which fills it
and changes in it, in order that nothing may distract us
from the contemplation of its pure form. We make it
infinite and infinitely divisible by carrying actual motions
and divisions on hi thought, because it is sweet to imagine
that no limit exists beyond which we cannot penetrate.
We make it continuous by idealising an (apparent)
feature of perception, in order to confer upon it a mystic
invulnerability. And lastly we make it homogeneous —
structureless, and therefore able to receive any and every
1 I should say ' certainly ' myself, but I prefer to understate the case. Cf.
Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. ix. §2-11.
I
U4 F. C. S. SCHILLER
n
structure — in order to relieve our minds and practical
forecasts of the utter and incalculable heterogeneity
which renders the physical qualities of real space different
at every point. And last of all we make perceptual and
conceptual space share in the same name, because for
practical purposes we want to identify the latter with the
former and to affirm its validity, and are not concerned to
save philosophers from confusion.
And yet when the philosopher has laboriously
disentangled the varied threads that are woven into the
texture of practical life, and questions us, we can realise
the character of our constructions. We can see full well
that all these attributes which conceptual space postulates
are impossible in perceptual space ; that is just the reason
why we demand them. They are pure abstractions which
idealise the actual and serve the purpose of enabling us to
simplify and to calculate its behaviour. And so long as
our assumptions come sufficiently near to reality for our
practical purposes, we have no reason to emphasise the
distinction between the two senses of ' Space ' and
indeed are interested rather in slurring over the
divergence between pure and applied mathematics.
§ 42. Our assumption, then, of geometrical space is
true because it works and in so far as it works. But
does it work ? In modern times ingenious attempts have
been made to contest this assumption, and to reconstruct
geometry ' on an empirical basis ' or at least, to construct
alternatives to the traditional ' geometry of Euclid.'
These ' metageometrical ' speculations have indulged in
many crudities and extravagances and have not in all
cases succeeded in freeing themselves from the very con-
fusions they were destined to dissipate. But they have
achieved a great work in stirring up philosophers out
of their dogmatic trust in 'the certainty of mathe-
matics,' and forcing them to realise the true nature of
geometric postulates.
The chief philosophic results of the Non-Euclidian
metageometry are briefly these. The Euclidian space-
construction rests upon ' the postulate of Euclid ' as to
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 115
parallel straight lines, which Euclid postulated in the
innocency of his heart, because he wanted it, and the
indemonstrableness of which had ever since been con-
sidered a disgrace to geometry. The simple explanation
of this fact proffered by metageometry is that conceptual
space is a generic conception capable of being construed
in several specific ways, and that Euclid's postulate (or its
equivalent, the equality of the angles of the triangle to two
right angles) stated the specific differentia of the space
Euclid proceeded to construct. But out of the same data
of spatial perception other systems of conceptual geometry
might have been constructed, whose distinctive postulates
(as to the number of ' parallels ' to be drawn through a
given point or as to the sum of the angles of the ' triangle ')
diverged symmetrically from that of Euclid and would
give rise to coherent, consistent and necessary geometries,
logically on a par with Euclid's and differing from the
latter only in the point of usefulness.
For, however much the new geometries of ' spherical '
and ' pseudo-spherical ' space 1 might claim to rival the
logical perfections of the traditional geometry, they have
not been able to contest its practical supremacy. Their
assumptions are much less simple, and their consequences
are much less calculable and much less easily applicable
to the behaviour of objects in real space. It seems to be
possible indeed to conceive experiences which would be
most easily and conveniently interpreted on meta-
geometrical assumptions, but it has had to be reluctantly
acknowledged that so far no such experiences have fallen
to our lot. Euclidian geometry is fully competent to do
the work we demand of our geometrical constructions.
But that does not make it more real than its rivals.
They are all three conceptual constructions which may or
may not be valid and useful, but which are alike in-
competent to claim existence. Hence the question which
1 The alleged geometry of four dimensions seems to rest on a false analogy.
The three dimensions of our space constructions are empirical and depend on
the original data of our space-senses, which in their turn seem to depend on the
triple analysis of motions by means of the semicircular canals of the ear, and the
behaviour of the physical bodies to which they are adaptations.
n6 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
has been so much debated in metageometrical controversy,
viz. ' whether our space is Euclidian or not ' is strictly
nonsense. It is like asking whether the Sistine Madonna
is the mother of Christ. To ask whether our space is
Euclidian or Non-Euclidian is like disputing whether this
assertion may be more truly made of the Sistine Madonna
or of the Madonna della Sedia. For like Raphael's pictures
all our conceptual geometries are ideal interpretations of
a reality, which they surpass in beauty and symmetry,
but upon which they ultimately depend, and it would be
hard to adduce more eloquent testimony of the dependence
of these theoretic structures on practical needs than the
fact that from the first the conceptual interpretation of
spatial experiences instinctively adopted by mankind
should have been that which subsequent analysis has
shown to be the simplest, easiest, and most manageable.
§43. For illustrative purposes the construction of the
conception of Time is vastly inferior to that of Space.
The conception of Time involves a much more arduous
effort of abstraction and its lack of ' Anschaulichkeit' is
such that it can hardly be conceived, and certainly cannot
be used, without an appeal to spatial metaphor. Hence
I must confine myself to a few hints showing the close
analogy of the method of its conceptual construction with
that of Space, in the hope that they may prove cpcovavra
GVVeToltTLV.
Nothing but misunderstanding of the nature of Time is
possible unless it is recognised that the word covers three
different things which may be distinguished as subjective,
objective, and conceptual Time.
Of these subjective Time (or times, since every centre
of experience possesses an indefinite plurality of his own,
if we do not — as for practical purposes we always do
— exclude the times of dreams, etc.) alone can claim to be
a matter of immediate experience. It consists in the
psychical facts of succession and memory, and its ' present
time ' always has duration. It forms the psychological
basis of all time-constructions, but for practical purposes
it is well nigh useless. Our subjective time estimates
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 117
vary too enormously for us to live by them. The time
which to the philosopher may pass all too rapidly in
metaphysical discussion, may bore the schoolboy to
extinction ; and conversely the philosopher might prefer
extinction to listening for three hours a-day to a discus-
sion of cricket matches or to a Parliamentary debate.
Hence for the purposes of what Prof. Ward calls
intersubjective intercourse it is necessary to devise or
somehow to advance to a ' Time ' which shall be more
objective. Objective Time is what we live by, and what
we read upon the faces of our ' time-pieces ' (provided
they ' keep time ' !) correcting thereby our subjective
estimates of the flow of successive experience. As this
example shows, objective time depends upon constructions
(including that of our watches) and motions, or more
precisely, upon the synchronism of motions and the
assumption of physical constants. But it remains wholly
relative, and this enables the philosopher to deduce some
curious and interesting consequences.1
To reach absolute ' Newtonian ' Time, flowing equably
and immutably from a infinite and irrevocable Past,
through a ' punctual ' {i.e. durationless and infinitely
divisible) and yet exclusively real Present, to an infinite
Future, conceptual postulation has to be called into play.
The absoluteness and equable flow are demands for a
constancy which objective Time will not show ; the con-
struction of Past, Present, and Future results from the
need to arrange the facts of memory ; the infinity and
infinite divisibility, as in the case of space, result from a
thinking away of the contents and limits of the actual
experience. But on the whole the usefulness of conceptual
Time seems very limited, and is counterbalanced by
troublesome antinomies as soon as it is separated from
the experience it is intended to interpret.2
§ 44. I pass over the axiomatic postulates of arithmetic,
the methodological postulates which are found in every
1 Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. iii. § 6, and ix. § II.
2 The best illustration of this perhaps is that if conceptual Time were real,
or ' Time ' really had the attributes postulated for it, Achilles never could catch
the Tortoise. Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. xii. § n.
n8 F. C. S. SCHILLER
n
science and the metaphysical postulates involved in the
conception of substance : the first, because I may refer to
Prof. James's account of them in the Principles of
Psychology (ii. p. 653 foil.) and have no desire to 'outdo
the good man ' ; the second, because of their number and
the amount of special knowledge which it requires to
expound and appreciate them ; the third, because in all
its traditional forms I am sceptical as to the usefulness,
and therefore as to the validity, of the conception of
substance, and cannot stay to propound measures for its
reform.1
§ 45. On the other hand too much may be gleaned
from the consideration of postulates which are not yet
acknowledged to be axiomatic, nor indeed universally
to be valid, for us to pass them over. I may mention
in the first instance the assumption of Teleology.2
Teleology in one sense is an indubitable postulate
of the highest significance. In the interpretation of
nature, we must always assume a certain conformity
between nature and human nature, in default of which
the latter cannot understand the former. Thus human
nature is the sole key to nature which we possess, and
if it will not unlock the arcana, we must resign ourselves
to sceptical despair. If, therefore, every attempt to know
rests on the fundamental methodological postulate that
the world is knowable, we must also postulate that it
can be interpreted ex analogia hominis and anthropo-
morphically.3 And moreover the closer the correspond-
1 The outcome of orthodox philosophic criticism of the substance-concept at
present seems to be that substantiality cannot be legitimately affirmed of the
psychical and must be reserved for the physical. Meanwhile the substantiality of
the ultimate counters of physical speculation is becoming more and more shadowy,
and its assumption more and more superfluous. The situation seems to me some-
what absurd. But que /aire so long as those concerned prefer the fog and decline
to clear the atmosphere ? Cf. however my art. on the Conception of 'Ev^pyeia
(Mind, N.S., No. 36).
2 By Teleology I do not mean, of course, the contemplation of parts in their
relation to a whole, but what the word — until (by way of compromising with its
enemies) it was attenuated to a futile shadow of itself — always meant, viz. the
assertion of purposive intelligence as an agency in the world.
8 Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. v. § 6. As Dr. Julius Schultz well says
in his stimulating book, Die Psychologie der Axiome (p. 99 and passim), to
think is to anthropomorphise. Intellectualists will perhaps admit this eventually
— shortly before their extinction !
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 119
ence between nature and human nature can be shown
"to be", the more knowable will the world be, and the more
" we shall feel at home in it. Hence, it is a methodological
demand to anthropomorphise the world as far as ever
we can.
Now human nature, in so far as it is ' rational,' is
teleological — it pursues ends which appear to it reasonable
and desirable, and tends to become more and more
systematically purposive the more highly it develops.
Of course, therefore, we must try to find this action for
the sake of ends throughout nature, or if we fail, to find
the most efficient approximation to it we can. Now,
with regard to the actions of our fellowmen, and indeed
in the case of all animal life, the full ascription of
teleology is not only practicable but practically unavoid-
able. But with regard to the other departments of
nature, and indeed nature as a whole, modern science
has persuaded itself that teleological explanations are
at present unworkable and therefore ' unscientific' The
ideal of scientific explanation is ' mechanical,' and this
is taken to be anti-teleological.
So far, therefore, teleology remains a postulate, which
it is not possible to carry through, and to render an
axiom of biological or physical research. The situation
is deplorable, but not desperate. For, in the first place,
the antiteleological bias of natural science is largely due
to the perverse use professing teleologists have made of
their postulate. Instead of treating it as a method
whereby to understand the complex relations of reality,
they have made it into an a/3709 \0709 which shut off
all further possibilities of investigation, by ascribing
everything to a ' divine purpose,' and then, in order to
shirk the laborious task of tracing the working of the
divine intelligence in the world, adding the suicidal ' rider '
that the divine purpose was inscrutable. Teleological
explanation was thus rendered impossible, while the
mechanical assumptions were found to be capable of
working out into valuable results, it is true of a lower
order of intelligibility. In the second place, although
- mmwM
120 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
the teleological postulate is not useful in the present
stage of scientific development, that is not to say that
it cannot be rendered useful hereafter. It is open to
any one to adopt the method, and if he can show-
valuable results attained thereby, he will not find true
scientists slow to recognise its validity. Hitherto indeed
the method has failed, not so much because men could
not use it, as because they would not, or at least would
not use it properly. If, at any time, they should want
to use it, they would probably find that it was useful
far beyond the limits of its present application.
§ 46. But even these limits are in reality far wider than
is ordinarily recognised. In another way from that which
we have just been considering the validity of teleology
is raised above the very possibility of question. What
are these mechanical explanations which have so success-
fully preoccupied the fertile fields of science ? They are
devices of our own, metlwds which we have tried and
found workable, ideals conceived by our intelligence to
which we are coaxing reality to approximate ; they are
pervaded by human purposiveness through and through,
and prove that, so far as we have tried, nature conforms
to our thoughts and desires, and is anthropomorphic enough
to be mechanical. In being mechanical it plays into our
hands, as James says, and confesses itself to be intelligible
and teleological to that extent at least. There is no
intelligibility without conformity with human nature, and
human nature is teleological. A mechanically law-abiding
universe does conform to some of our demands and is so
far intelligible. We must assume, therefore, that this
conformity will extend further, that, if we try sincerely
and pertinaciously and ingeniously enough, we can force
nature to reveal itself as zvJwlly conformable to our nature
and our demands. Nothing less than that will content
us, and nothing less than that need be assumed. Nay,
any attempt to stop short at something less, e.g. at a
world which was mechanically intelligible, or even intel-
lectually intelligible, but ignored our moral and emotional
demands, would seem to jeopardise all that the pertinacity
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 121
of our sciences has achieved. A world which can be ' fully
explained,' but only in mechanical or barely intellectual
terms, is not fully intelligible, is not fully explained. Nay,
at bottom it involves the most abysmal unintelligibility of
all, to my thinking. It lures us into thinking it rational,
only to check our progress by insuperable barriers later
on. Compared with the tantalising torment of this
supposition, and the derisive doubt it reflects on all our
earlier ' successes,' a scepticism which consistently assumes
a fundamental incommensurability of man and his ex-
perience, and a consequent unknowableness of the world,
and patiently endures their practical consequences, would
seem more tolerable and dignified.
We must, therefore, assume all or nothing — we have
some (unless we choose to lose it by lack of faith) ; we
must hope and strive for all. Shall we then, in face of
all the successes of our sciences, infer that all intelligence
(our own included) is a fond delusion for which there is
no room vis-a-vis of true reality ? 0 miscras hominum
mentes, o pectora cceca I Can it really be that they cannot
see that every triumph of the most rabidly ' anti-
teleological ' mechanical method is, from the ' synoptic '
standpoint of philosophy, so much more welcome testimony
to the power of the human mind and will to grapple
with its experience, and confirms the validity of its
teleological assumptions ? At all events such blindness,
whether it be involuntary or voluntary, is not possible to
one who has grasped the truth that theoretic truths are
the children of postulation. His eyes are opened, and
the question whether teleology is valid is finally closed.
For is not his whole theory one continuous and over-
whelming illustration of the doctrine that without purposive
activity there would be no knowledge, no order, no rational
experience, nothing to explain, and no means of explain-
ing anything? What, in a word, is his whole account of
mental organisation but a demonstration of the teleology
of axioms ?
§ 47. I must pass over with a mere mention sundry
postulates of a religious character, whose position has
122 F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
been rendered still more dubious than that of teleology by
the prevailing misconceptions as to the validity of postu-
lation. An intelligent reader will perhaps gather from
what has been said in the last section why the Personality
of God should be esteemed an indispensable postulate.
The fact again that the goodness of God is a methodo-
logical postulate * will be found to throw much light on
the rationality of all religions, just as the pitiably in-
adequate way in which it has actually been carried out
illustrates the irrationality which unfortunately ever
clings even to the best of them.
Is Immortality a postulate, as Kant maintained ? If
so, in what sense and to what extent ? These are
questions well worthy of being pondered, not without a
cautious discrimination between immortality in Heaven
and in Hell. But at present we are too profoundly
ignorant as to what men actually desire in the matter,
and why, and how, to decide what they ought to desire.
Hence, pending the publication of the results of a
statistical inquiry undertaken by the American Branch of
Society for Psychical Research, which I hope will
yield copious and valuable data, profitable discussion of
these questions must be postponed.2
VII
S 48. Having in the above sections exemplified the
method by which the postulatory nature of representative
axioms may be displayed, I may proceed to round off my
essay with some concluding reflections.
I will begin with a couple of cautions. In the first
1 Even devil-worshippers must assume that their god is susceptible to flattery and
capable of being propitiated, i.e. is good to them ; a thorough fiend would paralyse
all religious activity. As for a non-moral 'deity,' it cannot be worshipped and
may with impunity be ignored. Wherefore, q.e.d.
2 It seems probable that the result will be to show that though immortality
may be (logically) a postulate it is not (psychologically) postulated, or at least
not postulated with scientific intent. If so the anomalous condition of the doctrine
is due to the fact that the great majority do not desire to have a future life proved,
do not attempt to prove it, and thwart the few who do attempt this. Hence the
state of our knowledge remains commensurate with that of our desire, and the
' postulate ' remains a mere postulate without developing into a source of
knowledge.
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 123
place in default of a knowledge of the historical details of
the psychological development of our earlier postulates, I
have had to content myself with schematic derivations in
logical order. The real procedure was probably far more
complicated, casual, and gradual, and far less conscious
than I have represented it. In fact I see little reason to
suppose that any of the makers of the early postulates
had any consciousness of the logical import of their
procedure or knew why they made them. We know this
often to have been the case, that, e.g. the logical and
geometrical postulates were used long before they were
reflected on scientifically, and still longer before they were
understood. But this is no real difficulty, and we can
study the psychological processes involved by observing
any one who is persuading himself of the truth of what he
would like and would find it convenient to believe, eg.
that he loves where money is, or that being in love his
mistress is perfection. It is only for the cold-blooded
analysis of an unconcerned observer that logical chasms
yawn in such processes ; the agent himself in the heat of
action is wafted over them unawares by the impetuous
flow of instinctive feeling, and would doubtless reject our
analysis of his motives with the sincerest indignation.
For to an unreflective and uncritical mind whatever
looks likely to gratify desire presents itself with an
inevitableness and aesthetic self-evidence which precludes
all doubt. And we are all unreflective and uncritical
enough to accept the self-evidence also of the devices we
denominate • truth,' until at least the doubt as to their
real character has been forced upon us.
It should be clear from this how I should conceive the
logical question with regard to postulation to be related to
the psychological, and how I should reply to an objector
who was willing to grant that postulation is the method
whereby we come by our axioms psychologically, but
denied that this affected the logical problem of their
justification.
To this we should reply that we also distinguish
between the motives which assume and the trials which
124 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
justify an axiom. A postulate does not become
axiomatic until it has been found to be workable and in
proportion as it is so. But we deny that the two
questions can be separated and logic be cut adrift from
psychology and dissipated in the ether of the unintelligible.
Psychological processes are the vehicles of truth, and
logical value must be found in psychological fact or
nowhere. Before a principle can have its logical validity
determined, it must be tried ; and it can be tried only if
some one can be induced to postulate it. Logical
possibilities (or even ' necessities ') are nothing until they
have somehow become psychologically actual and active.
A ' truth ' which no one ever conceives is nothing. It is
certainly no truth.
Hence it is impossible to treat the logical question of
axioms without reference to the actual processes whereby
they are established, and their actual functioning in minds
which entertain the logical in close connection with their
other ideals. If therefore it is by postulation that we do
know, we cannot but base on postulation our theory of
how we ought to know. Here, as elsewhere, the ideals of
the normative science must be developed out of the facts
of the descriptive science. Regarded from the stand-
point of the higher purpose of the former,1 the
psychological processes must be purged of the hesitations,
inconsistencies and irrelevancies which clog them in their
actual occurrence, and when this evaluation is completed, it
yields the norms which ought to be, but as yet are only in part.
Thus (as must indeed have become obvious to a careful
reader of the preceding sections) the logical account of
Postulation is an idealised version of the course of actual
postulating. But for this very reason it has a guiding
power over the actual processes, which the fancy processes
of an abstracted logic, legislating vainly in the void, can
never claim.
§ 49. Secondly, I am of course aware that in applying
to the problem of knowledge the method of origins I am
debarred in one sense from giving a complete explanation.
1 Which of course is itself a psychological fact.
n AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 125
For granting that I have succeeded in connecting our
cognitive apparatus with the earlier functions of conscious-
ness by means of the principle of the postulate, it is open
to any one to demand the reason why we should be
capable of feeling and volition, and so gradually to drive
me back into the formless, mindless, undifferentiated void
which is conceived to precede all evolution. That this
difficulty should occur in all theories is no answer, and a
poor consolation.
The true answer is that the method of origins is of
relative validity and that in the end we never find out
' what a thing really is ' by asking ' what it was in the
beginning.' Nor does the true value of the method
reside in the (illusory) starting-point to which it goes
back, but in the knowledge it acquires on the way. The
true nature of a thing is to be found in its validity —
which, however, must be connected rather than contrasted
with its origin. ' What a thing really is ' appears from
what it does, and so we must study its whole career. We
study its past to forecast its future, and to find out what
it is really ' driving at' Any complete explanation,
therefore, is by final causes, and implies a knowledge of
ends and aims which we can often only imperfectly
detect.
All this of course applies also to the case of knowledge.
Knowledge cannot be derived out of something other and
more primitive ; even if the feat were feasible, it would
only explain ignotum per ignotius. Hence to analyse it
into ' elements ' and ' primary forms ' is in a manner
illusory ; so long as its structure is not completed, the
final significance of its forms cannot be clearly mirrored
in its structure. Ultimately, therefore, it is impossible to
explain the higher by the lower, the living organism of
growing truth by its dissected members. If we desire
completeness, we must look not to the vXt], as in different
ways our theories of knowledge all have done,1 but to the
1 For both the apriorist and the empiricist accounts add this to the catalogue
of their shortcomings. Both explain the system of actual concrete knowledge
which is growing to completion in the cosmic process, by a reference to the
beggarly elements out of which it has arisen, composed of the abhorrent skeleton
126 F. C. S. SCHILLER
n
Te\o9. And to claim definitive finality for any present
theory of knowledge would seem to crave no slight equip-
ment with the panoply of ignorance.
But is the end in sight ? Can we infer from what
knowledge has been, and now is, what it should be, and
God willing, will be ? We can of course (as explained
in the last section) construct, to some extent, the ideal on
the basis of our knowledge of the actual. But though
therefore an answer is not perhaps wholly inconceivable
even to this question, an exploration of the seventh Heaven
is hardly germane to the present inquiry.
S 50. I cannot more fitly close this rough sketch of a
great subject than by adding a few words as to the prob-
able effect on philosophy of a more general adoption of the
principle I have advocated. It may, I think, reasonably
be anticipated that it will have a reviving and most in-
vigorating influence upon an invaluable constituent of
human culture which too often has been betrayed by the
professing champions who were bound and paid to sustain
its banner against the attacks of fools and Philistines.
Philosophy is once again, as so often in its history, ' the
sick man' among the sciences: it has suffered unspeakable
things at the hands of a multitude of its doctors, whose
chief idea of a proper regimen for the philosophic spirit
has been to starve it upon a lowering diet of logic-chopped
conundrums, to cut it off from all communication with
real life and action, to seclude it in arid and inaccessible
wastes whence there is an easy descent to the House of
Hades, and by constant blood-letting to thrust it down
into the gloomy limbo where a pallid horde of useless, half-
hypostasised abstractions vainly essays to mimic the wealth
and variety, the strength and beauty of reality. That
philosophy has not perished out of the land under such
treatment testifies with no uncertain voice to its divine
destiny and to the glow of ambrosial fire that courses
in its veins. We may expect, therefore, a marvellous
of the a priori necessities of thought in the one case, and the crude mass of
chaotic experiences in the other. But from the standpoint of the reXos what
knowledge has become is truer, because more valuable, than what it has become
out of.
ii AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 127
recovery once it has by the might of postulation shaken off
the twofold curse under which it has for so long laboured,
the curse of intellectualism and the curse of a will that does
not know itself, and in its self-diremption turns against
itself, to postulate the conflicting and incongruous.
Intellectualism, to which it has already several times
been necessary to refer in unappreciative terms, is
naturally the besetting sin of philosophers, and a per-
ennial idol of the academic theatre. Intellect being
the distinguishing characteristic of the philosopher and
the indispensable means of holding a mirror up to
nature, he exhibits a constant tendency to substitute
the part for the whole and to exalt it into the sole and
only true reality. His infatuation is such that it seems
to him to matter not one whit, that it proves patently
and pitiably unequal to its role ; that to maintain itself
in the false position into which it has been forced, it
has to devastate reality and call it truth ; that it has
to pervert the empty schemata of ' universal ' abstractions
from their legitimate use as means to classification, and
erecting them into ends, to substitute them for the living
reals ; that even when it has been permitted to cut and
carve the Real at its pleasure, and to impose on us two-
dimensional images in lieu of the solid fact, it has in the
end to confess that the details and individuality of the
Real elude its grasp.
But when, for the sake of bolstering up an inhuman
and incompetent, and impracticable intellectualism, an
attempt is made to cut down the scope of philosophy
to an attenuated shred which intellectualism can con-
template without dismay, when we are required to believe
that philosophy need aim only at understanding,1 and
at understanding in general, without either condescending
to the particular, or considering that which ' passeth all
understanding,' it is high time to protest. It is the
individual concrete experience in all its fulness which
1 The thing is of course really impossible. A mere ' understanding ' which
excludes any aspect of the given reality is not even understanding in the end, and
would only aggravate our sense of the burden of an unintelligible world.
Cf. § 46.
128 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
every man worthy of the name wants philosophy to
interpret for him ; and a philosophy which fails to do
this is for him false. Intellectualism is necessarily false
because it only operates with conceptions, whose purpose
and essential construction incapacitate them from account-
ing for the individuality from which they have abstracted.
It reduces the philosopher to an impotent spectator of
a supra-rational universe which he can interpret only as
irrational.
And in this case the on -looker sees nothing of the
- game, because he sees a game which he does not under-
stand, and cannot understand unless he has tried to play
it. It is a false abstraction of intellectualism to divorce
thinking from doing, and to imagine that we can think
the world truly without acting in it rightly. But in reality
this is quite impossible. ' Pure ' thought which is not
tested by action and correlated with experience, means
nothing, and in the end turns out mere pseudo-thought.
Genuine thinking must issue from and guide action,
must remain immanent in the life in which it moves
and has its being. Action, conversely, must not be
opposed to thought, nor supposed to be effective without
thought ; it needs thought, and elaborates it ; it is not
a " red mist of doing " which obscures the truth, but the
radiance which illumes it.
In Lebensfluten, im Thatensturm,
Wallt es auf und ab . . .
So schafft es am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Und wirket der McnschJieit lebendiges Kleid.
Faust, Act i. Scene i (with the
necessary variations).
To trace, therefore, to their root in the postulations of
personal need the arrogant pretensions of ' pure thought,'
and thus to get rid of the haunting shadow of intel-
lectualism, reopens the way to a philosophy which re-
mains in touch with life, and strenuously participates in
the solution of its problems.
§ 51. Such practical success in its completeness is,
of course, a sufficiently remote contingency ; but there
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 129
is a further reason for the expectation that it will be
greatly facilitated by the proof of the volitional foundations
of our intelligence. For it disposes also of another
serious and inveterate source of philosophic confusion,
and constant stimulus to philosophic despair, viz. the
notion that philosophic difficulties arise out of the
incompetence of the reason. Now there is some foundation
for this notion. A certain class of philosophic problems,
to wit, those which have no earthly concern with practical
life (like, e.g. the Absolute and its habits), and so cannot
be tested by action, are really ultra vires of an intelligence
which was devised and developed to harmonise experience.
But then we have all along contended that such problems
are not real problems at all, but miasmatic exhalations
of a false intellectualism, which has misconstrued its own
nature and powers. Such problems are insoluble, because
in the end they are unmeaning. But there are other
cases where the intellect seems to fail us in questions
of the most pressing practical importance. Hence so
long as the dogma of the primacy of the intellect prevails,
it seems hard to acquit the human reason of the
charge of being infected with fundamental disabilities
and insoluble antinomies. For is it not easy to draw
up a formidable array of incompatible assertions and to
provide each with a 'proof in logically unexceptionable
terms ?
But of these ' difficulties ' it now seems possible to
propound a profounder explanation. The real root of
the trouble may be found to lie in the will rather
than in the reason, whose innocent amiability is always
ready to provide an intellectual formulation for the most
discordant aims and the most obscure desires. Let us,
therefore, insist that before the reason is condemned
untried, and philosophy is finally reduced to a trivial
game which may amuse but can never really satisfy, it
is necessary to inquire whether the ' antinomies ' do not
arise rather from volitional discord than from intellectual
defect, whether the contradictions of the reason are not
forced upon it by an indecision which knows not what
K
)
130 F. C. S. SCHILLER
a
it wills, a division of the will which insists on willing
incompatibles, or a lack of courage and endurance which
fails to follow out what it wills.
That this should be the case need not arouse surprise.
We are all sufficiently aware that systematic thinking,
clearly conscious of its aim, is a somewhat infrequent
phenomenon, and that in myriad ways intellectual confusion
renders possible the co-existence of inconsistent doctrines
in the same mind. But the intellectualist phrasing of our
terminology renders us slow to recognise that infirmity of
purpose is a no less rampant affliction, that numbers of
really intelligent persons are addicted to the retention of
incompatible desires, and either do not know what they
will, or cannot ' make up their minds ' to will consistently.
Indeed it is probably true to say that ' confusion of will '
is a better description of a very common psychic condition
than ' confusion of thought,' and that most of what passes
for the latter is more properly ascribed to the former.
For all such volitional indecision, whereof a desire both to
eat one's cake and to have it is by no means the least
venial form, masks itself in intellectual vestments, and
so contributes to cast doubt upon the faith that, with
patience and proper treatment, our minds are adequate
instruments to cope with the practical problems of our
experience.
In illustration of this doctrine a single very common
and glaring instance may, on the principle exemplo ab uno
disce omnes, suffice. The insolubility of the ' mystery of
evil ' arises simply and solely out of the fact that people
will neither abandon the practice of passing moral
judgments on events, nor the dogmas which render all
ethical valuation ultimate foolishness. As soon as they
make up their distracted ' minds ' (wills) which of the
incompatible alternatives they will choose to abide by,
whether they prefer to vindicate the supreme validity of
moral distinctions, or the ' infinity of God ' and the
absolute ' unity of the universe,' the mystery disappears.
For Evil visibly arises from certain limitations, performs
certain functions, subserves certain purposes, is connected
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 131
with certain conditions, in the economy of the universe,
all of which admit of being empirically determined or
conjectured. All that is required, therefore, to bring the
existence of Evil into accord with the postulated goodness
of God is that we should conceive (as we easily can) a
deity subject to the limitations, working under the
conditions, aiming at the purposes, which we believe
ourselves to have discovered. Similarly, if we deny that
moral attributes can fitly be applied to the deity or the
universe, Evil is simply a natural fact like any other. Of
course, if we refuse to do either of these things, and insist
on maintaining both these positions, we manufacture a
mystery which is as insoluble as we have made it. It is
insoluble because we will not either live in (or with) a non-
moral universe, or give up indulging a perverted taste that
revels in infinities. Thus it is not our ' reason ' which is
to blame, but our ' will.' For neither reason nor revelation
compels us to frustrate the belief in God's goodness by
that in His infinity.
And even in cases where a modicum of genuine
intellectual confusion has entered into the composition of
an antinomy of the reason, it is impossible to deny the
complicity, and ultimate responsibility, of the ' will.'
Intellectual confusion is most frequently the product of
habitual thoughtlessness, carelessness, inattention and
laziness, and even where it is due to sheer stupidity,1 the
obstinacy which adheres to an antinomy after its solution
has been clearly displayed is a volitional quality — of a
reprehensible kind.
We may infer then that there are no theoretically
insoluble problems, or at all events that we have no right
1 The moral valuation of stupidity is much too high ; perhaps in consequence
the prevalence of an intellectualism which, by divorcing knowledge and action,
encourages people to bestow moral admiration upon what is intellectually
contemptible. Stupidity is commonly supposed to have an intrinsic affinity with
virtue, or at least to be a quality of which no man or woman need be morally
ashamed. In reality, however, it may be questioned whether it is ever found
without moral guilt, either in its possessors or in their social medium. Hence, as
well as for the purpose of evincing the sincerity of their rejection of intellectualism,
it would be well if philosophers devoted some of their surplus ingenuity to
inverting their ancient paradox that 'vice is ignorance' and expounding in its
stead the profounder and more salutary dictum that ' ignorance is vice.'
132 F. C. S. SCHILLER
ii
to assume so, but are methodologically bound to assume
the opposite.1
§52. But, it may be urged, how does all this, even if
true, help Philosophy? Is it not just as bad, nay worse,
that men should hug intellectual contradictions to their
bosoms, and cherish absurdities with an affectionate
devotion, than that they should believe themselves their
reluctant victims ?
I think not, for three reasons which I will set down.
(1) The man who realises that he is inconsistent,
deliberately and of malice prepense, can more easily be
made to feel the responsibility for his mental condition
than he who imagines that the very constitution of his
mind brings him to his wretched pass. Moreover in most
cases, the desires which attach him to one or other of
the incompatible beliefs are not such as he really respects,
and would easily faint from shame or wither with publicity.
(2) Confusion of will may be remedied, like confusion
of thought, by attention and reconsideration. Many who
have hitherto proceeded unchallenged in blissful ignorance
of their motives, who have lacked a clear consciousness
of what they will and why, once they had their attention
called to it would set to work to clear away the confusion.
(3) There is hope from the young, even though the
old generation should obstinately cling to its inveterate
errors. Errors as a rule are not renounced ; they die
out. In this particular case the prospect is perhaps a
little brighter than usual, because not all who now believe
in their speculative impotence really enjoy their position.
And the young are in a different case : their natural
sympathies are rather with a philosophy that makes the
blood run warm than with one that congeals the natural
flow of thought by the chilling vacuity of its abstractions.
And they have little or no inducement to adopt the
gratuitous and uncomfortable perplexities of their seniors.
And besides errors clearly seen to arise from perverse
1 I am already inclined to deny that, despite the utmost efforts of sceptics,
theologians, and Mr. Bradley, there exist any theoretical antinomies which can be
pronounced insoluble in principle — unless indeed the ' eternal cussedness ' of man
be esteemed such.
II
AXIOMS AS POSTULATES 133
attitudes of will are no longer so readily communicable as
while they were disguised as theoretic dogmas. Nor
should it be forgotten that intellectualism is intrinsically
duller, less inspiring, and more difficult to follow than
voluntarism, which appeals more directly to the hopeful-
ness, courage and enterprise which are the precious
heritage of youth.
So that on the whole we need not despair of Philosophy.
Nay, we may gradually hope to see substituted for the
disheartening and slothful twaddle {pace all the distin-
guished persons who have repeated it) about the infirmities
of the human reason and its impotence to break through
the adamantine barriers of an alien world, exhortations
bidding us be of good cheer and go forth to seek,
if we would find, urging us to act if we would know,
and to learn if we would act, and assuring us that if
insuperable limits exist to the development and progression
of the human spirit, man has not as yet taken pains
enough to discover them, while it is the part of a cur
and a craven to assume them without need.
And so we must essay to weld together thought and
deed, or rather, to resist the forces that insidiously dis-
sever them and pit the intellect against the will in mean-
ingless abstraction. For by a philosophy that seriously
strives to comprehend the whole of experience, the unity
of the agent is never forgotten in the multiplicity of his
pursuits, but is emphatically affirmed in the principle of
postulation, which pervades all theoretic activity, generates
all axioms, initiates all experiment, and sustains all effort.
For ever before the eyes of him whose wisdom dares to
postulate will float, in clearer or obscurer outline, the
beatific vision of that perfect harmony of all experience
which he in all his strenuous struggles is striving to attain.
And instead of immolating his whole life to the enervating
sophism that it is all an ' appearance ' to be transcended
by an unattainable ' reality,' let him hold rather that
there can be for him no reality but that to which he wins
his way through and by means of the appearances which
are its presage.
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM IN ITS
RELATION TO PSYCHOLOGY
By W. R. Boyce Gibson
Part I. Freedom : A Defence and a Statement
i. Much of the perplexity attaching to the problem of Free-Will arises from
the wide-spread belief that free-will and universal determinism are not
necessarily incompatible.
2. In upholding this view the theory of ' soft ' determinism, as it has been
called by Prof. James, makes such concessions to the theory of ' hard ' or
mechanical determinism as render freedom logically impossible. Dr.
Bosanquet and M. Fouillee, for instance, make concessions of this kind.
3. The crucial concession is made when soft determinism concedes that only
matter in motion can be a determinant of material changes ; for the
consequence of this admission is a logical dilemma which compels the
conceder to own that he must be either a materialist or a supporter
of the conscious automaton theory.
4. To escape from this dilemma, we must either retract the concession which
led to it, or show that the conclusions to which the concession logically
drives us are all absurd.
5. The retracting of the concession is virtually a challenge to the mechanical
determinist to prove his own statement instead of pressing us to accept
it as axiomatic.
6. To this demand for verification the mechanical determinist answers by
pointing to the growing fruitfulness of science wherever the proposition
in question is accepted as a regulative principle. Such verification is,
however, by no means complete, and cannot disprove the reality of
effective psychical initiative.
7. The attempt to waive this demand for verification on the ground that the
typically individual element involved in an act of free-will eludes by its
very particularity the possibility of a scientific handling, cannot be
regarded as valid.
8. The alternative way of escape from the original dilemma by showing
the absurdity of its conclusions is the simplest so far as the positive
indictment of absurdity is concerned. It is palpably absurd to deny
that ' meaning ' is a determinant of material changes.
9. The more difficult task consists in answering the counter-indictment of
absurdity brought forward by Naturalism in self-defence. But we are
134
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 135
able to show : (a) that the principle of psychical initiative is in no
way incompatible with the principle of the Conservation of Energy,
properly understood ; and (/3) that it does not violate the meaning ot
the causal concept, inasmuch as the idea of causal nexus does not pre-
suppose either a measured equivalency or a homogeneity in nature
between cause and effect, and the idea of psychical causality in particular
is no more open to the charge of inconceivability than is the idea of
causality through material agency.
10. If Freedom is not Soft Determinism, neither is it Indeterminism. The
necessity for choosing definitely between these two rival theories arises
only when the issue is restricted to the abstract consideration of some
specific volitional act. It is therefore imperative to clearly define the
issue at stake by insisting that freedom is the essence not only of self-con-
scious volitional activity but of consciousness itself, and that we cannot
profitably discuss its possibility unless we start from the relation in which
the conscious subject stands to its object within the unity of experience.
11. From this fundamental standpoint we can make a distinction between two
forms of Psychology, only one of which is justified on the ground of its
fundamental postulate in treating the Ego as a free agent ; the postulate
in the one case being the deterministic assumption of the physical
sciences, and in the other the assumption of a mutual independence of
subject and object which is at one and the same time relative and real.
12. A criticism of Prof. James's indeterministic position shows that Indeter-
minism errs in three main ways : i° in its restricted, abstract point of
view, 2° in its recourse to the Dens ex machina, and 3° in its formalism.
Part II. The Psychology of First Causes: A Fundamental
Distinction stated and applied
1. Statement of the Distinction
13. It is customary with psychologists to look upon the deterministic
assumption as a necessary postulate of scientific inquiry. This is true
of what is known as Empirical Psychology, whose method is essentially
inductive. But Psychology may be treated from another and more
inward point of view as a Science of Free Agency, and as such
accepts as its fundamental assumption a certain relation between
subject and object, which guarantees the real though relative in-
dependence of the subject. This distinction is marked not only by
a radical dissimilarity in the nature of the postulate, but by a corre-
spondingly radical difference of method.
2. Development of the Distinction
14. A complete definition of Psychology should include a reference to the
points of view from which it is to be studied. For the point of view
determines the method, and the radical difference of method referred
to above constitutes the best differentia between the two main forms of
psychological treatment. The Inductive Method is not the only method
for investigating the facts of the mental life. It is the method proper to
the spectator's point of view. From the point of view of the experient
himself, what is truly explanatory of his mental activity is not laws
inductively reached, but final causes, ends of action, the synthetic
principles through which the agent helps in creating his own destiny.
1 5. Consciousness has for long been regarded as essentially a synthesis, but
its unity has been persistently conceived as a combining form rather
than as a causal agency. It is only recently that Dr. Stout's con-
136 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
I ception of the unity of consciousness as conative unity or unity of interest
has brought the causal factor to the front.
3. Application of the Distinction
16. Ambiguities of a fundamental kind arise so soon as we ask ourselves
what it is that we really mean when we call Psychology a Natural
Science. Is it merely descriptive, or is it explanatory as well ? Is it a
mechanical science or a teleological science, or both ? In what sense
is it natural as opposed to normative ? In what sense is it natural as
opposed to metaphysical ? The distinction already traced between
the Inductive Psychology and the Psychology of First Causes will
help us to unravel these ambiguities.
17. i". A discussion of the first difficulty shows us that Psychology is
descriptive or explanatory according as it is studied from the spectator's
point of view and by the Inductive Method, or from the inward point
of view of the experient himself by the help of what may perhaps be
called the Synthetic or Teleological Method.
18. 2°. As a solution of the second ambiguity, we see that as a science
of first causes Psychology is primarily and essentially teleological in
its method, but that as an inductive inquiry its method is essentially
mechanical.
19. 30. With regard to the relation in which Psychology stands to the
Normative Sciences, it can be shown that the Psychology of first causes
stands in a far more obvious and intimate relation to such a science as
Logic or Ethics than does the purely empirical Psychology.
20. Finally, 40, touching the relation in which Psychology stands to Meta-
physics, we find that whilst Inductive Psychology stands to Metaphysics
in precisely the same relation as do the physical sciences, it is otherwise
with the Psychology of first causes. It can, in fact, be shown that the
distinction between the inductive and the teleological Psychologies affords
a basis for a corresponding distinction in the relation of Metaphysics to
Psychology.
Part I. Freedom : A Defence and a Statement
S 1. THE question of free-will owes its obscurity far less to
its own inherent difficulty than to the perplexities which
have been thrown in its way by the theory of universal
determinism. Though there is overwhelming positive
evidence in favour of free-will, evidence at least as strong
in its own sphere as that of the inertia of matter in the
sphere of abstract mechanics, there is still in many
quarters a strong disposition to hold it as an illusion
because of the difficulty it finds in adjusting itself to the
demands of this insatiable theory. The problem is
moreover gratuitously obscured through a certain over-
considerateness on the part of the free-willists that
completely succeeds in defeating its own end. Deter-
minism of the strictest mechanical kind — so the agreement
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 137
runs — shall have free sway over all the lower realm of
matter in motion, provided only that the free subject be
left to develop apart along spiritual lines according to its
nature. This concession hard determinism smilingly
accepts, and, on the strength of it, triumphs as assuredly
as it does with all those schemata of psychophysical
parallelism which are at bottom of its own making.
It concerns us then to show that that soft determinism
which fights freedom's battle whilst keeping aloof from
the true fighting line and complacently yielding to the
mechanical philosophy all its heart's desire, cannot possibly
secure the freedom that it claims. We must insist on the
fact that the only true champion of freedom is the hard-
hitting anti-determinism that joins issue with mechanism
along its own frontiers, stoutly maintaining its right to
reclaim much of the ground that has been unlawfully
appropriated by the mechanical philosophers.
§ 2. As an instance of what Prof. James so aptly calls
" soft " determinism, we may take the attitude adopted
by one of our foremost thinkers. " Why object," writes
Dr. Bosanquet, " to the mind being conditioned by the
causation or machinery of the sequence of bodily states ?
The important point is, what the thing actually is ; i.e.,
what is its nature, and in what does its organisation consist?
We are quite accustomed to find that the things we value
most have been able to develop through a system of
mechanical causation," 1 and he adds elsewhere : " If you
think the whole universe is mechanical or brute matter,
then we can understand your trying to keep a little mystic
shrine within the individual soul, which may be sacred
from intrusion and different from everything else — a
monad without windows. But if you are accustomed to
take the whole as spiritual, and to find that the more you
look at it as a whole the more spiritual it is, then you do
not need to play these little tricks in order to get a last
refuge for freedom by shutting out the universe." 2
Now in answer to this we must say, with all respect,
three things: — (1) We do not object to the mind being
1 The Psychology of the Moral Self , p. 124. a Ibid. p. 9.
138 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
conditioned by this mechanism, but object only to the
indifference shown as to the amount or extent of the
conditioning. The most exalted conception of my
spiritual nature will be poor consolation if I have to
recognise that my being here and not there in the body
at any given instant is a fact determined entirely by
mechanical considerations. (2) It is quite true that from
the point of view of mind's capacity for freedom, its nature
is the most important consideration, but whether such
freedom is an illusion or not, depends entirely on whether
it remains throughout this life of ours a mere capacity
and nothing more, or an actual energy that does work
after its own nature. But whether this is so or not
depends again on whether the exigencies of mechanism
really leave scope for it or not ; a permanent possibility
of freedom is of no avail if a rigorous mechanism does all
the work in its own rigid way. From the point of view
of the free-will controversy the positive nature of mind is
therefore not the essential thing, but rather its relation to
matter and the laws of matter. (3) The question cannot
be decided from the watch-tower of spiritualistic monism,
for such spiritualism has no basis, much less a superstruc-
ture, except in so far as it has won the ground it builds
upon from the rapacity of a theory that claims the whole
universe for its exclusive footing. And so long as that
footing is held uncontested, no amount of spiritual
complacency can avail anything.
M. Fouillee is another soft determinist. Like Dr.
Bosanquet and others of the same convictions he has in
reserve a most valuable armoury to be used in freedom's
cause when once freedom can find ground to stand upon
and room to move in. " We are indeed children of the
Cosmos," he says,1 " yet, once brought forth and dowered
with a brain, we possess stored up within us some of the
conditions of change and movement which are found in
Nature, a share in the causality of the universe, interpret
that expression as you will ; if anything is active in this
world of ours, we too are active ; if anything that is itself
1 La Psychologie des I dies- Forces, Introduction, p. xxiv.
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 139
conditioned, conditions in its turn, we ourselves condition
likewise. The line of connection between antecedent and
consequent, whatever it may be, passes through us." But,
we may ask, within a system of universal causality,
however interpreted, what room is there for initiative ?
An initiative that enters, it doesn't matter how, into any
closed system of antecedents and consequents is itself
determined, not by itself but by the antecedents. That
which conditions after being conditioned is simply trans-
mitting, not initiating, some capacity to condition which
originates, we must suppose, with some great far-off First
Cause. If we are children of the Cosmos in this sense
we are at best mere accumulators of potential spiritual
energy which, at the prick of some antecedent, passes into
the kinetic and actual forms. This conclusion is not at
all modified by M. Fouillee's repeatedly emphasised dis-
tinction between mechanical and spiritual determinism.
Both are determinisms, that is the main point, the one
hard and rigid, the other soft and flexible. Thus we read
in the second volume of the Idces-Forces : "If the facts of
Psychology cannot be truly brought under the idea of
mechanism, they stand in no such intractable relation to
the idea of determinism, provided that by determinism we
understand something far more complex and at the same
time more flexible than the determinism of the philo-
sophers, notably the associationists ; " 1 and on another
page of the same treatise, " Psychological determinism is
doubtless much more flexible, indefinite, incalculable, than
is physiological determinism, still, from our point of view,
it is none the less a determinism." 2 Now this pliant
conception of determinism resembles nothing so much as
the easy indeterminism which M. Fouillee so resolutely
opposes. Thus in his essay on the " Dilemma of Deter-
minism," Prof. James writes as follows : — " Indeterminism
says that the parts have a certain amount of loose play on
one another," and again, " Indeterminism thus denies the
world to be one unbending unit of fact " ; 3 and the
1 Fouillee, La Psychologie des Idt'es- Forces, ii. p. 282. 2 Ibid. i. p. 267.
y James, The Will to Believe and other Essays, p. 150.
140 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
language undoubtedly suits the needs of Indeterminism
much better than it can do those of Determinism, however
soft and yielding.
Are we then after the example of James himself, to
find refuge from our chafe against the flexibilities of free
determinism in the shapeless arms of indeterminism? Such
a reactionary movement is, as we shall try to point out
later, needlessly heroic. Is it not possible, we ask, to
cleave to the ancient name of Freedom without posing
either as an indeterminist or as a determinist, rigid, soft,
or free ? We hold that it is certainly possible, and hope
to justify the distinction in the sequel ; meantime, with
this end in view, we may return with advantage to the
main line of our argument.
§ 3. The soft determinist, as already remarked, has a ten-
dency to put matter in motion completely under the control
of the mechanical philosopher, complacently believing that
whatever conclusions the latter may legitimately come to,
on his own ground, will undergo spiritual renewal and
take on the meaning of liberty so soon as they come
under the transfiguring spell of some higher category.
Such complacency is, however, most inopportune, for the
concession it so gracefully yields up is all that the
mechanical theory needs or asks for; for in virtue of it the
body of the free-minded philosopher down to its minutest
tremors is at once most ruthlessly enslaved : he cannot
even extend his generous hand without simply carrying out
a predetermined necessity of action which the Laplacean
calculator could have foreseen emerging at the birth of
time from the original nebula.
Let us now press this issue more closely, and ask
wherein this concession precisely consists. There is, I
think, a difference of point of view here which is the
cause of much confusion. The apologist of mind is very
apt to think that the only reserve he need make when
dealing with the mechanical philosopher is to point out
that the matter in motion committed into the hands of
the latter has a certain aspect which cannot in any way
concern his physics. It is not only extended and inert
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 141
and so on, but it is knovvable. The idealist, of the type
we are considering, seems to imagine that, when considered
afresh as knowledge, matter in motion will become duly
penetrated with such spiritual meaning as will lift it
entirely beyond the reach of the physicist. Meanwhile
the living body pays the penalty of the spirit's tran-
scendentalism, the physicist taking care of that in his
own way. The mechanical philosopher, in other words,
considers the concession from an entirely different point
of view. As sole trustee of matter in motion he at once
safeguards his interests by insisting on the doctrine that
only matter in motion can determine in any way the
movements of matter. This is how he understands the
concession.
Here then is the crucial statement definitely stated :
" Only matter in motion can be a determinant of material
changes," and the psychologist must either allow its validity
or at once reject it as insufficiently verified. We will
suppose that he does the former, and on this assumption
follow the concession into its various consequences.
The concession once made by the apologist of mental
agency, his opponent, the naturalist, approaching him
in Socratic fashion asks him whether he believes that
mind determines the movements of matter. If the
psychologist forgets himself sufficiently in the truth of
things and answers in the affirmative, he is handed the
following syllogism to reflect over : —
Whatever determines movements of matter is itself
matter in motion.
Mind determines movements of matter.
.". Mind is itself matter in motion.
Ergo : You are a materialist.
If this bait fails, however, the second is sure to succeed.
For when the psychologist, repudiating all connection with
materialism protests that he does not believe that mind is
matter in motion, that, in fact, mind is not matter in
motion, his opponent is at once able to answer him as
follows : — You admit then the two following premises :
142 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
1. Whatever determines movements of matter is
itself matter in motion.
2. Mind is not matter in motion ;
you must therefore admit the following conclusion :
Mind does not determine the movements of matter.
Ergo : You are a supporter of the Conscious
Automaton Theory.
Now there is no escaping from this cruel alternative,
once the major premise has been conceded. This is
shown on a big scale by the later history of Philosophy.
The Barbara syllogism was tried first and accepted by
Holbach, Lamettrie, Helv£tius and the rest. It was the
hey-day of Materialism. Gradually it became obvious
that such materialism was ridiculous, consciousness being
irreducible to a mode of motion. Camestres then came
into favour, and psychophysical parallelism into vogue.
Yes, and in our own day when so many find shelter
under the shadow of Huxley and Avenarius, this second
syllogism is still cherished as the germ and root of all
true Philosophy.
§ 4. What then are we to do ? One of two things. We
must either push on or retrace our steps, for to stand
where we are is to confess ourselves beaten. Either way
is a way out. Formally, the push-ahead method is the
better of the two ; i.e., if we can show that the conclusion
of the second syllogism is quite as ridiculous as the
conclusion of the first, that it is quite as absurd to reduce
consciousness to complete inactivity as it is to reduce
it to a calculable mode of motion, we shall make it
impossible for our opponent to ferret out new middle
terms in order to prove the same old conclusion in
different ways, for the conclusion will have been disproved
once and for all.1
1 Moreover, we shall have the pleasure of meeting with Scepticism on the
way, for wherever there is a formally valid syllogism with a conclusion proved
to be materially false, and with premises asserted to be obvious, there will
Scepticism be found. Scepticism in fact is none other than an attitude of
philosophical sulks which persists in obstinately sticking to premises though all
the conclusions to which they lead have had to be given up. ' ' I have one
conclusion in reserve," it says, "which becomes the more convincing the more
m THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 143
We have then two methods of procedure open to us,
the push -ahead method of contradicting the conclusion
of a syllogism and the falling-back method of retracting
the admission that led to all the trouble. Let us consider
more closely the logical relation between them.
§ 5. It is important in the first place to notice what
is involved in the retracting of an admission. Such
retraction simply means non-acceptance of the retracted
statement as a proved statement ; it does not imply any
ability to disprove it even by a single instance. It says :
" I see now that I was not justified in accepting that
fateful major premise as obvious or proved, nor do I
consider myself bound to accept it until you can
completely verify it." On the other hand, the flat
contradiction of the conclusion that mind does not
determine material changes requires much more than
this. A direct proof that in at least one instance or
class of instances mind does actually determine the
movements of matter would of course be the most
satisfactory way of meeting the requirement. Such a
direct proof is, however, out of the question since we
have not yet discovered how it is that mind, qua mind,
can come into contact with matter at all. The assertion
is, however, capable of a very stringent indirect proof.
This indirect proof in its primitive and essential bearing,
consists in a reductio ad absurdum of the conclusion we
wish to contradict ; and indeed the proposition that mind
has its share in determining material changes is quite
sufficiently established by the absurdities to which the
contradictory assertion inevitably leads, as Dr. Ward in
his Gifford Lectures has so ably shown.1 Still, the
indirect proof remains incomplete so long as it leaves
unanswered certain objections that are at once raised
you demolish all the others, for these serve as premises for it just in proportion
as they are proved absurd." And this is the final syllogism : —
A mode of reasoning according to which conclusions necessarily inferred
from obvious premises are yet demonstrably absurd is not to be trusted.
Now the process by which we human beings acquire Knowledge is just such
a mode of reasoning.
Therefore, Knowledge is not to be trusted.
1 Cf. also Sigwart, Logic, Eng. trans. , ii. pp. 388-393.
144 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m
by the naturalist so soon as the result of the reductio ad
absurdum proof is stated in the positive form, " Mind
therefore, is a determinant of mental change."1 We
shall come across these by-and-by.
We proceed now to develop these two lines of
defence : —
i. The retraction of the major ;
2. The contradiction of the conclusion.
S 6. I. The retraction of the major of the Naturalistic
Syllogism. — The retraction of the major is, as we have
seen, equivalent to the request that the mechanical
philosopher will please verify his statement before he
presses us to accept it ; and our main business is to see
clearly what this demand for verification really involves.
It is in the first place most essential to note that the
demand must not be addressed to physical science as
such. Physical science has no ears for such a question.
If the physicist deigns to reply at all, he will say
something of this kind. " You are laying your meddle-
some hand on the great regulative principle which defines
the nature and meaning of my science. You are asking
me to verify the principle upon which all my verifications
are based. I can no more fall in with your request than
Euclid could have done had he been asked for a proof
of his own axioms, or the great Stagirite himself, had
a proof of his Principle of Contradiction been demanded
of him." This language is not exaggerated. The
physicist, qua physicist, is perfectly justified in resenting
as an impertinence the demand that he shall prove the
principle which at every step of his work determines
the direction of his inquiry. An illustration from
Astronomical Science may help to make our meaning
clear. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century
certain puzzling irregularities were observed in the
1 This contradiction of the conclusion indeed requires, as we have already
hinted, more of the negator than the denial of the major premise itself involves ;
for in the latter case it is only necessary to show that something other than
matter in motion can set matter in motion, whereas the denial of the conclusion
requires the special proof that the movements of matter can be determined
by mind.
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 145
movements of the planet Uranus. There were two
conceivable ways of hypothetically explaining these
irregularities. Either Uranus was being disturbed by
the influence of matter in motion elsewhere, or by some
volitional agency of more than human power. This
second alternative was not in itself inconceivable. It
was inadmissible only as a scientific explanation. It was
an alternative that Astronomy could not possibly have
admitted without ipso facto admitting that it had reached
the limits of the science, i.e. without ceasing to be
Astronomy. Suppose, however, that some incalculable
demon had really been responsible for the perturbations.
Could Astronomy, we ask, have ever found it out ? By no
means. It would be still puzzling its mighty intellect
for a mechanical solution and meanwhile be blaming its
telescopes, the irreflecting nature of the surface of the
disturbing body, its extraordinary density that left it too
small for visibility just there where it ought to have been,
etc., etc., and so it would go puzzling on for ever,
readjusting its hypotheses, even that of gravitation itself,
if necessary, in order to render the phenomenon
mechanically intelligible. It would, in fact, simply repeat
over again in its improved modern way, those processes
of adjusting and readjusting epicycles and excentrics
which were forced by the same respect for postulates
upon the bewildered observers of the Middle Ages.
So much for the physicist, qua physicist, and his
connection with the matter. Regulative principles, qua
regulative principles, must be left severely alone. They
are principles for working with and not for discussing.
We must turn then to the philosopher in physics who in
the capacity of naturalist first forced upon our attention
the doctrine we are disputing. We must demand our
verification from him. What then does the mechanical
philosopher say by way of justifying the statement that
he makes ? He puts himself at the outset under the
shadow of the physicists. " The physicist," we hear him
say, " is of course quite right in having nothing to do
with you. All the material sciences presuppose the non-
L
146 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
interference of mind. They stipulate in the first place
that whatever is subjective in sensation or opinion shall
be winnowed away by objective verification, and pre-
suppose in the second place that such objective verification
is not thwarted by the caprice of some incalculable demon
or other untraceable volitional agency." "Now this silence
on the part of Physics," he continues, " is the best proof
possible of the real truth of its regulative principle : it is
being perpetually verified by its fruits. Apart from the
living body all moving matter has already been deanthro-
pomorphised, while as regards the living body itself, our
mechanical physiologists are busy deanthropomorphising
that, and are proving successful beyond expectation.
Indeed it is becoming abundantly clear that it is only the
complexity of this material that now stands in their way,
and that when that difficulty has been overcome, there
will be nothing occult or undetermined, even in the
most sprightly of men. The spins and rolls and intimate
twists of a man's body will then be seen to be as
mechanically unidetermined as are the motions of a
spinning-top, a billiard ball, or a screw." Now there is
only one answer to this, the simple reminder, namely, that
uniform success in the application of any working principle
to any subject-matter does not verify it in those special
regions where it has not yet been applied, and that where
great spiritual issues seem to depend on its not being
universally applicable to the subject-matter in question
there is every reason to cry out " unproven !" even though
your opponent is seated triumphantly on the Milky Way
and you are squeezed between the inner and the outer
rinds of a man's brain. If the physiologist were ever
able, in detail, to show that all the molecular movements
in a living body were entirely determined by mechanical
relations, then the idea of psychical guidance would be
exploded. " Thereafter," as Dr. Ward puts it, " the idea
of psychical guidance would not conflict with a theory, it
would be refuted by facts."1 But no such verification
is forthcoming. Physiology has not shown that its
1 Naturalism atid Agnosticism, ii. p. 71.
nf THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 147
subject-matter is coextensive with the sum-total of the
molecular changes within the organism. As a science it
is deanthropomorphic by definition ; its assumptions and
methods are mechanical, but the life it studies is not
therefore deanthropomorphised. It has not yet proved
that there are no eminent causes,1 no body set in motion
by mind. It only assumes that there are none, and works
upon that assumption. Psychology must see that a
methodological assumption is not stiffened into an axiom,
and in the meantime rest content that its fundamental
belief in the reality of effective psychical initiative and
guidance is at least not disproved by physical science,
since the latter has failed to prove that certain physical
events within the living organism may not have other
than physical conditions.
§ 7. This, I fancy, is the only way in which the ad-
vancing tide of matter can be restrained from that undue
encroachment upon the frontier-shores of mind which, if
demonstrably successful, would reduce Psychology to the
level of a Science of pure Illusion. I can think of only
one other suggestion for coping with the difficulty, as
alluring as it is inadmissible. Why not state frankly, so
it may be urged, that this demand for verification is a
demand which Science by its very nature is precluded
from satisfying ? The movements wherein freedom finds
expression, are they not of that highly individualised type
which Science, on account of its general character, cannot
possibly bring under its control ? Does not Science fix
and universalise whatsoever it touches, can it ever take
into consideration at all motions which being under an
individual's control, will never recur again under precisely
the same conditions ? And if this is the case, can we not
conclude that Science on account of the uniform generality
of its processes is for ever debarred from investigating the
individualised movements of living bodies in motion, and
hence for ever debarred from disproving the assertion of
immediate experience, that mind can help in determining
the movements of matter ?
1 Cf. Ward, id. ii. p. 73.
148 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
This specious plea that the real unknowable for Science
is the individual element, and that this individual element
is precisely what is involved in the assertion of free-will
cannot be seriously entertained in this connection, for the
simple reason that to hold the individual thus beyond the
reach of Science is either to beg the whole question or to
underestimate the possibilities of Science. The only
individuality we can here be dealing with is the atomic
individuality of matter in motion, and this being so, a
judicious use of the scientific imagination will, I think,
enable us to picture to ourselves how Science could
grapple with the difficulty which such material individu-
ality presents. We must imagine a wonderfully-devised
instrument, a combination of biograph, stereoscope, and
improved Rontgen apparatus, which could be so worked
as to reproduce in its own mechanical way upon a screen
all the motions of all the individual cells of a living body,
and with it the environment with which the body happened
to be in immediate contact during any continuous lapse
of time. Let us further suppose that this instrument is
helped out by a microscope that can indefinitely increase
the spatial dimensions of things, and that an indefinitely
slow motion in time is secured through an extraordinary
perfection of the biograph section of the instrument, on a
principle similar to that which now enables scientists to
study at leisure, in its successive stages, the moment's
history of the splash of a drop. The record once taken
would be indefinitely reproducible, so that the objection as
to the uniqueness of the momentary states of brain and
body would cease to exist. The conditions under which
the movements took place could always be renewed.
The mechanical philosopher would then be able to follow
in detail the movements of each individual cell, follow
each remotest tremor to its source in the periphery or
central organ, and so eventually have the chance of putting
his regulative principle to its final test. Of course it
would not be necessary, so far as verification of the point
at issue is concerned, to study more than one typical
instance, provided it were really typical. The individual
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 149
whose motions were thus being recorded would have to
be taken when he was deliberately excercising his will
with a knowledge of the issues involved.
We may consider ourselves then fully justified in
pressing the mechanical philosopher for the verification
of " that most unwarrantable assumption " that, whatever
determines the movements of matter is itself matter in
motion, and in building up our mental philosophies
meanwhile, on the assumption that it will never be
verified, and that a conscious effort of the mind can
bear its associated body at any time in an absolutely
unpredictable direction, and to an absolutely unforeseeable
distance in that direction. The element of weakness
involved in this attitude may be summed up in the fact
that, from the standpoint of this argument, we are always
exposed to the bare possibility of having to confess in
some dim future age that our opponent's statement has
been duly verified and must be accepted. Still the
possibilities of such verification, in the problem under
discussion, are so immeasurably remote that they may
be treated as infinitesimals of an infra-logical order and
be entirely neglected. Such neglect may moreover prove
to be strictly justified by the results reached along the
second line of procedure wherein we contradict the
conclusion of the naturalistic syllogism by the help ef
a reductio ad absurdum, to which second defence we now
proceed.
§ 8. 2. The contradiction of the conclusion of the natural-
istic syllogism by means of a reductio ad absurdum. — The
thesis that mind can not in any way determine material
movements, that, as Dr. Sigwart puts it, " we stand in no
other relation to our bodies than to the motion of the
fixed stars " l is one of the most extraordinary paradoxes
that the wit of man has ever propounded. We must
try and show that it is also one of the most absurd. Its
essential purport is, that all material changes that occur
in the body or out of it, take place in entire indifference
as to whether they chance to be accompanied by con-
1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 391.
ISO W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
sciousness or not. Consciousness is only an echo, a
shadow, an epiphenomenon, an emanation from nowhere,
that appears so soon as certain essential conditions are
realised, e.g., the sufficient nutrition of the various parts
of the nervous system, and disappears with the disappear-
ance of any one of these essential conditions, but neither
its coming nor its staying nor its going concerns in any
way anything but itself. Thus, according to the theory
we are criticising, the movements of the pen with which
these words are written and the written words themselves
are, as movements and products of movement, perfectly
independent of the instinct and the thought that find
expression through them : they would have come to pass
in precisely this way and no other had the last spark
of consciousness flickered away countless ages ago ; and
the reader who interprets the printed type and lingers
over some sentence, his whole statuesque attitude,
whatever it be, was a foregone conclusion when the
first atom in space gave its first little shiver.
To describe such paradoxes as these is really to
explain them away : they shrivel off in their own light.
Still it is best to seize even an absurdity by some
tangible handle. Let us then replace the somewhat
vague conception of " mind " by the much clearer one
of " meaning," and ask ourselves whether any theory
that makes meaning ineffectual in determining the
movements of one's body can evade the charge of
absurdity ? Let us take two or three definite instances.
Consider for a moment the import that the words " yes "
and " no " have on certain critical occasions. " Yes "
sets the young blood careering in all directions, " no "
determines for the body the attitude typical of wounded
pride, misery, or despair. Shall we say that this
difference is simply the difference in organic reverberation
consequent on the difference in tympanal flutter due to
two such different air-vibrations as that set going by a nasal
and that other set going by a sibilant ? Or take another
instance. A goes up to B as he leans with his back to
the mantelpiece and tells him in French that his coat-
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 151
tails are on fire. The organic result is imperceptible.
He repeats the statement in English and B's whole body
instantaneously reacts. Or again you insult A, who
happens to be deaf, and he smiles at you ; you treat B
to the same epithets, and he flings you them back in
scorn. Meaning and Motion are then unquestionably
connected in this sense that that which is not matter
in motion, namely meaning, is yet an important deter-
minant of material changes, and the theory that compels
us to deny the connection in this sense is hopelessly
absurd.
§ 9. There seems to be but one intelligible retort to
this charge of absurdity. It takes the " tu quoque " form,
" I'm mad, that's true, but so are you." This retort
consists in bringing forward certain important objections
to the statement that mind can determine material
changes with the conviction that they are unanswerable,
so that when the final reckoning is made the most
formidable verdict for the critic of naturalism will be
that thesis and antithesis are equally absurd, that it
is just as impossible to maintain that mind can determine
matter as it is to maintain that it cannot.
a. Let us start with the most frequent as well as the
most superficial objection that is raised by Naturalism
to the idea that mind can determine the movement of
matter. The statement, it is urged, is incompatible with
the great principle of the Conservation of Energy. Let
us briefly examine this objection. It starts with assuming
that mind or mental activity can only control matter
on condition of introducing into or abstracting from
the material system a certain supply of fresh energy
or capacity for physical work, and this it is maintained
is quite out of the question. And the reason given is
simply this, that the amount of energy in the material
universe is constant.
Now, in the first place this statement is far from
being the record of an ascertained fact. What physicist
has ever established an equation between the whole
energy of the universe at any time, including the energies
i 52 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
of all the stars of heaven and all the cells of all living
bodies, and its' energy at a subsequent moment of time.
No physicist, we may safely say, has ever dreamt of
such an equation. The equation of constancy is in
fact a most unjustifiable extension in indefinitum of
the well-known equation of equivalence. The fallacy
involved in this extension is picturesquely exposed by
Dr. Ward. " Those who insist that the quantity of this
energy in the universe must be constant seem to me,"
says Dr. Ward, " in the same position as one who should
maintain that the quantity of water in a vast lake must
be constant merely because the surface was always level,
though he could never reach its shores nor fathom its
depth." J
This remark leads us on at once to our second point,
to wit, that the so-called principle of the constancy of
energy has not even the hypothetical necessity of a
regulative principle of Physics. What guides the
physicist in forming his energy-equations is not the
idea of the constancy of energy within the universe, but
that of the balance of energy about any given change as
fulcrum. The energy -level must remain constantly the
same. There must be equivalence between the distribu-
tion of energy within the system under consideration
and any subsequent redistribution of this energy within
the system. The " constancy of energy " as a postulate
of physics comes indeed to nothing more than this.
" Given a finite, known quantity of physical energy —
energy, that is, which has its mechanical equivalent —
then if that energy be measured after any transformation,
it must be precisely equivalent in amount to the original
quantity." It is stipulated, in other words, that lost
energy can always be found again provided the precise
amount lost is known. There is no attempt to deal
with the whole amount of energy in the universe at
any time, a perfectly indefinite, incalculable quantum.
The assumption of constancy is therefore not in any
way the physicist's assumption. Just as the postulate
1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 76.
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 153
of the indestructibility of matter is really nothing more
than the balance of weights after a chemical change,
so that of the indestructibility of energy is nothing more
than the mathematical balance — in terms of mechanical
equivalents — between the capacity for work within a
certain closed system before a certain amount of actual
work is done, and the capacity for work within the same
closed system after the transformation has taken place.
The first postulate has meaning only in so far as bodies
have weight, the second only in so far as energies have
their mechanical equivalent ; in either case, to express
the matter more generally and more accurately, the
postulate has meaning only in so far as the possession
of a common denominator enables it to be made.
Now when the constancy of energy is understood
in this strictly economical and scientific sense, the
interpretation cannot in any way demand the exclusion
of mind from among the possible determinants of material
changes, except as a convenient, or rather, necessary
postulate for the working purposes of physics, — without
making the assumption that the truth of a principle
within a closed circle of material agency sufficiently
justifies the inference that material things must under
all circunistances form a circle closed on all sides.1 Here
again we have to defend the rights of spirit and spon-
taneity by insisting that Physical Science shall not make
statements that stultify all spiritual life and make history
ridiculous unless it be prepared to prove them to the
hilt. The conservation of energy is quite incapable
of any such proof, and Naturalism would do well to
ponder over these words of Dr. Sigwart : — " Even if
equivalence between all chemical events and mechanical
motion, heat, electricity, etc., were fully established
empirically, yet we could be certain of the truth of
the principle only within the sphere in which its deter-
minations were obtained, in those purely physical and
chemical events of inorganic nature which we reduce
to exact casual laws in such a way that every event may
1 Cf. Sigwart, Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 387.
154 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
be calculated from its conditions." But in Psychology
we have not the same footing. The possibility of stating
the amount of potential energy stored up in a sperma-
tozoon or a germ " is a hypothesis justified upon Methodo-
logical grounds, but not a proved proposition." x
The result of this discussion may be explicitly stated
as follows. It has shown that the doctrine of the
Conservation of Energy can offer no decisive objection
to the theory that mind controls matter by actually
increasing or diminishing the amount of energy in the
universe. It was important that we should gain this
concession from our opponents. We could indeed have
evaded the whole argument had we been content to allow
that mental control over matter can take effect without
any energy being introduced into or withdrawn from the
physical universe ; for once we allow that mind while
controlling and directing energy, is yet not a source of
energy, we have no cause of dispute with the principle of
Conservation. Energy being directionless or rudderless —
to use Dr. Ward's expression — mind could then play the
part of a rudder without interfering with the unconditional
integrity of the principle in question. But such evasion,
like many another, would have been worse than profitless.
The concession, while it gave a handle to the mechanical
philosopher for effective purposes of counter -thrust,
avails the conceder nothing. For the principle of the
Conservation of Momentum which takes direction of
motion as well as velocity into account is ready to
swallow up what the Conservation of Energy can spare.
As soon as mind makes its modest attempt to direct the
dance of the vital molecules without putting into its work
any physical energy, contriving to push constantly at
right angles to the direction of motion with the ideal
accuracy of the mathematician, it is snapped up as
trangressing the inviolable unideterminism of physical
changes — and this is the root of the whole mechanical
theory — according to which not only the energy but the
direction of motion of every atom of matter is pre-
1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 384.
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 155
determined from the very outset.1 Energy is directionless
not in the sense of drifting chancewise at every turn but
in the sense of its being a function of velocity only,
and not of this velocity's direction. It is directionless only
when abstracted in thought from the matter that embodies
it : the moving matter itself, as the physicist conceives it,
moves eternally along in its predetermined courses, and
its capacity for work goes with it. In a word there can be
no loopholes in a system which is based on the postulate
that there shall be none. " That a rigorous determination
is deducible from the mechanical scheme is due to the
fact that it has been put into the fundamental premises." 2
/3. A somewhat deeper-going objection to the theory of
mind's control over matter suggests itself naturally at this
point of our inquiry. Granted that it has been shown
that as a statement of fact the objection grounded on the
Conservation of Energy is baseless, and that it is equally
impossible to maintain that the doctrine has any binding
claim over our thought, it may yet be urged that inas-
much as our theory expresses a causal relation between
mind and matter, it violates the meaning of the causal
concept and is therefore inadmissible. But before we
fall in with this objection let us look well at the causal
chain with which our objector proposes to fetter us, and
fix our attention, in particular, on its three main links.
Each of these, we find, bears its own peculiar inscription.
On the first we read that there must be quantitative
equivalence between cause and effect ; on the second that
there must be qualitative likeness or homogeneity between
cause and effect, and on the third that the connection
between cause and effect must be scientifically conceivable.
Now we propose to show that these conditions which the
all-enslaving naturalist imposes on his conception of
1 The same fundamental objection applies to Sigwart's own footnote suggestion
(Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 386) that it might be possible to maintain the
hypothesis that the physical law of energy remained intact, and that only the
conditions of the transition from active energy into potential, and vice versa, vary
with relations to psychical states.
See also Petzoldt, Einfiihrung in die Philosophic der Reinen Erfahrung,
Leipsic, 1900, Part I. ch. i. especially p. 16.
2 Dr. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 67.
156 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
Causality, far from constituting the essential and obligatory
definition of the causal concept, are not only unnecessary
in themselves but implicitly recognised as unnecessary by
Science herself.
The first link in this triple objection to the idea of
a causal psychical control over matter consists essentially
in the assertion that as we cannot measure psychical
events as we can physical events, there is no possibility of
a causal nexus between them. That we cannot measure
psychical events as we can physical events needs no
proving but, as Dr. Sigwart reminds us, " even in the
region of Natural Science, many causal connections have
been accepted as existing beyond doubt, and regarded as
inductively proved, before their equations were known ;
that friction produces heat and that heat, through the
expansion of steam, gives rise to motion, was ascertained
before Mayer and Joule had found the equations which
enabled them to calculate how much of the heat produced
changes into motion, and how much is useless for the
purposes of the steam-engine." 1 Similarly if we take the
connection between an effort and the consequent muscular
activity, noting how the work of the muscles increases
with the amount of exertion, we see that though we
cannot measure exactly the intensity of the effort made,
we have still as much a right to consider as causal the
connection between effort and muscular contraction as we
had the original connection between friction and heat.
On the second link we have the hoary adage " like
can only be produced by like." Dr. Ward has helped us
to a better grasp of what this adage implies, by reviving
the old Cartesian distinction between the causa eminens
and the causa forjnalis. " Thus if one body is set in
motion by another, the motion is produced formaliter in
the Cartesian sense ; but if a body were set in motion by
mind, such motion would be produced eminentcr" 2 Now
this heterogeneity of nature which, in the case of mind and
matter, is supposed by Naturalism to constitute a chasm
1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 384.
2 Dr. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 73.
„, THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 157
unspannable by any causal bridge, is characteristic not
only of eminent but also of formal causes. Is it not Lotze
who reminds us that the action between two material
bodies, if we only look deep enough, is quite as mys-
terious as interaction of the eminent kind ? To the
physicist who looks no further than his figures there is
of course all the difference in the world between the
mathematically calculable character of the former, and
the incalculable character of the latter, but this is a
question that concerns merely the value of the causal
idea for physical purposes, not the nature of the idea
itself. Moreover, since the category of reciprocity has
come into vogue, the unit of causal action is taken to be
an interaction between two substances, forces, or factors,
and the question as to the respective natures of agens
and pattens regarded as irrelevant, from the point of
view of causality, agens and patiens developing the
interchange, each according to its own nature.
The third link introduces us to that mole-like creature,
the " Inconceivable," whose grasp of facts is literally
determined by the reach of its own nose. Now, when
reach and grasp are co-extensive, it generally happens
that the common horizon is determined by the limits of
sense-perception. Thus when the brilliant imagination
of Prof. James is baffled by the fact of mental activity,
and he declares that mental activity is probably a mere
" postulate " because no amount of introspection can
possibly reveal it, he is simply identifying the inconceiv-
able with the unintuitable. But if this unintuitable
character of the action between mind and matter is the
obstacle alluded to in the motto on the third link, it is
an objection that applies in another and more funda-
mental way to all the connections which thought establishes.
" It is no objection," writes Sigwart in a striking passage,
"that we can form no intuitable picture of what takes
place," for "what we can intuit is never more than the
event and the linking of events, never the fact that the
one is grounded by the other. For ordinary conscious-
ness the connection between my will and the motion of
158 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
my arm is just as intuitable, i.e. just as firmly grounded
in immediate experience and association, as the trans-
mission of a shock from one billiard ball to another ; it
may be, indeed, that we should find the latter even less
comprehensible, if we had not been previously familiar
with our power of thrusting a body away by a voluntary
movement of the hand." x
The objection of inconceivability may, however, bear,
not on the unintuitable character of mind's action on
matter, but on its intractability, on the fact that science
is perfectly nonplussed by it. This may well be, but
when so stated, the objection ceases to be directed at its
former mark. It no longer urges that mental control over
matter cannot be causal, on the ground that it is unin-
tuitable and therefore inconceivable, but only lays stress
on the fact that this admittedly causal relation is quite
unanalysable. Indeed Dr. Ward himself brings forward
this objection. " It must be candidly confessed," he says,
" that, however much we insist on the fact that mind can
direct and control inert mass, we are quite unable to
analyse the process." 2 This is only too true. Had it
been otherwise the objections of determinism would have
admitted of being attacked directly, instead of by the
indirect methods we were compelled to adopt.
If we may indulge the hope, at this point of our
inquiry, that the objections of hard determinism have
been sufficiently met, and that the concessions of soft
determinism have been shown to yield more than the
problem of Freedom can spare, we may, I think, turn
with a good conscience to the task of clearly defining
our relations with Indeterminism, or, as it is sometimes
called, Libertarianism.
§ io. Now the present writer must frankly confess that
of the two objectors to mechanical determinism, the flexible
determinist on the one hand, and the bold indeterminist
on the other, he has the greater sympathy with the
latter, and considers him the more valuable champion of
1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 387.
2 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 85.
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 159
free-will, in so far at least as the ground-work of the
problem is concerned. It seems impossible not to agree
with Prof. James in saying that once a man's alleged
spontaneity is completely at the mercy of its antecedents
and concomitants it is logically indifferent what these
determinants may be, whether of the crow-bar or the
velvety type, whether they constitute a nexus of cranial
motions and dispositions, or a nexus of motives, character,
and circumstance. Whether the predetermination be
physical or psychical the result is in both cases the
same : the act of spirit could not have been other than
it was.
It is under the heating influence of this conviction
that Professor James throws the deterministic mechanism
for guiding free-will completely overboard and commits
himself heroically to the rudderless steersmanship of
chance. " Determinism," he says — and under the title
he includes the soft as well as the hard species — " denies
the ambiguity of future volitions, because it affirms that
nothing future can be ambiguous." l Indeterminism on
the other hand affirms this ambiguity unequivocally, and
gives it its true unequivocal name " Chance." " Inde-
terminate future volitions," we read, " mean chance " 2
" Whoever uses the word chance, instead of freedom,"
adds our author some pages further on, " squarely and
resolutely gives up all pretence to control the things he
says are free. ... It is a word of impotence, and is
therefore the only sincere word we can use, if, in grant-
ing freedom to certain things, we grant it honestly, and
really risk the game. Any other word permits of
quibbling, and lets us, after the fashion of the soft de-
terminists, make a pretence of restoring the caged bird
to liberty with one hand, while with the other we
anxiously tie a string to its leg to make sure it does
not get beyond our sight."
Now it is hard to feel ungratefully towards such
refreshing similes as these, but the word "chance" is
1 Essay on "The Dilemma of Determinism" in the vol. entitled The Will
to Believe and Other Essays, p. 158. 2 Ibid.
i6o W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
surely too desperate. Though under the magical touch
of the great psychologist it puts on the beautiful appeal
of a free gift — the idea of chance being at bottom, so
we are told, exactly the same thing as the idea of gift, —
even this cannot conceal its utter spiritual nakedness.
In James's own words " it is a word of impotence," and
seems to betoken a spirit not our own that works for
chaos, a comet-like visitant that flaunts its own caprice
in our bewildered faces rather than the essence of our
own selves working for freedom and order.
But, comes the protest, is it not more impotent still
to sit on the fence lamenting both the impotence of the
spirit fettered by a flexible fate and the equally im-
potent condition of the spirit through which, as through
a reed, the breath of Chance bloweth where it listeth,
than it would be to trust oneself resolutely to the one
issue or to the other ? Yes, we answer, it surely is, so
long as we are limited to a fictitious partition between
two equally illogical alternatives, but we beg leave to
protest against this arbitrary restriction both of our
problem and of our preference.
And here we touch the heart of the whole matter :
to wit, the narrowness of the issue as it is presented
by the Indeterminist, and as it is characteristically
accepted by the flexible determinist. The Indeterminist,
like the Britisher, is king of his own castle, and woe to
the combatant who fights the battles of Freedom within
that breezy but treacherous enclosure. Of such a kind
is the indeterministic challenge of Professor James. The
professor chooses his own position. It is the position to
which his physiological researches and mechanical pro-
clivities have led him. " Future human volitions," he
tells us, " are as a matter of fact the only ambiguous
things we are tempted to believe in " ; 1 consequently we
shall be greatly helping to clear up the real issue of
this free-will controversy as well as greatly simplifying
the whole discussion if we agree, as we must, to restrict
our attention to some specific volitional act. " Both
1 James, Text-book of Psychology, p. 155.
ni THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 161
sides admit that a volition has occurred. The inde-
terminists say another volition might have occurred in
its place : the determinists swear that nothing could
possibly have occurred in its place." 1 Are you then a
determinist or an indeterminist, for there is really no
fence to sit on, and you must be one or the other?
Now we are prepared to urge that the triumph of
the indeterminist is due solely to the willingness of his
opponent to fight him on his own issue. Dr. Stout, for
instance, seems to have fallen into this trap when in dis-
cussing the forming of a decision, he says : " At this
point the vexed question of free-will, as it is called, arises.
According to the libertarians, the decision, at least in
some cases, involves the intervention of a new factor, not
present in the previous process of deliberation, and not
traceable to the constitution of the individual as deter-
mined by heredity or past experience. The opponents
of the libertarians say that the decision is the natural
outcome of conditions operating in the process of
deliberation itself. There is, according to them, no new
factor which abruptly emerges like a Jack-in-the-box in
the moment of deciding."2 So stated, we say, the issue
is between Indeterminism and Soft Determinism, and we
give our vote in favour of the Jack-in-the-box.
Fortunately, however, for the interests of freedom the
issue is, even on psychological ground, a much wider one
than the above quotation would lead one to suppose.
Prof. James tells us that the consciousness of an alternative
being also possible, a consciousness which characterises
effortless volition as surely as it does free effort is, in the
case of effortless volition, a most undoubted delusion
(cf. Text- Book of Psychology, p. 456). We hold, on the
contrary that it is as certainly not a delusion, and that^
freedom is the essence not only of self-conscious volitional
activity but of consciousness itself, that it is a permanent
attitude of the conscious subject, consciousness always
implying a consciousness of the subject's relative in-
1 James, Text-book of Psychology ', p. 155.
2 Manual of Psychology, p. 589.
M
162 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
dependence in relation to the object that conditions but
does not necessarily regulate its activity.
§11. We have now reached the crux of our whole
inquiry. The ground here is full of pitfalls and we must
proceed as warily as possible. Our aim is to find a basis
for freedom within the restricted province of Psychology
itself. In order to do so we shall find it necessary, as we
hope to point out in detail in the second part of this
Essay, to draw a distinction between two radically
different conceptions of the purport and meaning of
Psychology, only one of which is qualified to discuss or
even to consider the question of freedom. Each
Psychology starts with its own characteristic statement
as to the nature of the experience it proposes to examine.
Each makes an assumption with regard to the nature of
that experience, an assumption which determines the
whole further course of the inquiry, and each inquiry
further is stamped as specifically scientific — as opposed to
philosophical or metaphysical — by the fact that it makes
this assumption. The assumption in the one case is
deterministic, the individual's experience being here
considered as something to be explained independently
of the personality of the experient himself, to be explained
briefly by the so-called laws of psychical causality. The
assumption in the other case must be non-deterministic
and allow us to treat the individual's experience as the
experience of a free agent. It is the assumption of a
more inward Psychology than the other. It seeks to
define the relation of the experient to that which he
experiences in such a way as to safeguard at one and the
same time both the unity of that experience and the
relative independence of the free agent with respect to
the conditioning elements in that experience. The
assumption then of the more inward Psychology is that
the relation between the experiencing subject and the
objects which condition its experience is that of a duality
in unity — the unity consisting in the permanent indis-
solubility of the relation, and the duality in that co-opera-
tive opposition of the two factors within the unity of
m THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 163
experience whereby a certain relative independence is
secured to each. 1
With the metaphysical validity of this assumption we
are not concerned. Taken as an ultimate metaphysical
point of view it may or may not lead us to monads and
other haunts of subjective idealism. This is, indeed,
matter for further discussion, but it lies outside the limits
of a psychological inquiry. What we are especially
concerned to point out is that once we accept the
assumption as a valid statement of the relation of the
factors within immediate experience we ipso facto accept
certain facts as fundamental for the Psychology based on
that assumption : for to accept an assumption respecting
the nature of real experience is just to posit as real
whatever facts that assumption involves. In the present
instance the two essential facts involved are — (i°) the in-
dissoluble tie connecting the subjective and objective
factors in experience — a tie such that the former can
can have no experience save through the latter ; and (20)
the relative independence of both factors, the freedom of
the agent and the conditioning quality of the objects.
Accepting this assumption then as truly indicative of
the fundamental character of all immediate experience,
whether it be the experience of reflection — the so-called
internal experience — or the experience of sense-perception
— the so-called external experience, — we have freedom
given us as a fact which can only be disputed by dis-
puting the assumption. Freedom, then, as the fundamental
fact of this more inward Psychology, is the relative
independence of the subject which the duality of Subject
and Object in the unity of Experience presupposes.
Now this relative independence means real independ-
ence, that kind of independence which has something of
the nature of James's " original," " spiritual," " force," has
its independence, in fact, without its indeterminism.
What this independence means may be best gathered by
considering its counterpart, the independence of the
objective factor in the unity of Experience. This in-
dependence of the object — an independence hardly
1 64 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
sufficiently realised, perhaps, by Idealistic monism, though
strongly emphasised by Dr. Stout — is shown in at least
two ways : —
i°. By the way in which it conditions subjective activity
at every turn of experience, in the sense of limiting it in
various ways ;
2°. By the fact that the conquests of subjective activity
are all so many discoveries of the nature and capabilities
of that which conditions it, as well as of its own nature
and capabilities. The results of such activity depend on
the nature of the conditioning material which is being
manipulated. The number of stones in a heap does not
alter with the counting or the counters.
But to discuss in any detail the relative independence
of object or subject would lead us too far. Our concern
is just to' point out that the problem of Freedom can
only be seen aright from this inner, central point of view,
a point of view present not only in volitional decisions,
but in every act of mind whatsoever.
8 1 2. We are now in a position to point out in
conclusion, the precise relation in which we stand
to Indeterminism. Indeterminism as represented by
Professor James errs, in our opinion, in three main
ways : —
i°. It sets the problem of Freedom from its own
restricted, abstract point of view. It starts with the
deterministic endeavour to eliminate freedom as far as
possible from all the processes of mind. At last it
reaches a crux, a residual psychic phenomenon, the
phenomenon of effort, when Freedom must either be
pressed out of the universe altogether, and Morality and
Religion, to say nothing of Knowledge, become mere
phantasms of feeling and fancy, — or else paraded as the
absolutely undetermined, the absolutely unconditioned.
Meanwhile the fundamental inner relation of all immediate
experience is ignored. The irpwrov -\jrevSof of Indeter-
minism is that it first sets the problem of Freedom on a
dualistic basis, and so can see no tertium quid between
the absolutely unconditioned and the absolutely predeter-
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 165
mined. It can only offer us the choice between Fatalism
and Chance. It can see no meaning in relative inde-
pendence.
2°. Closely connected with this prime defect we have
the cognate defect of the Deus ex machina. This
drawing on the radically discontinuous is a weakness
inherent in and common to all systems that are too
abstract for their purpose or subject-matter. " If we
are to understand the world as a whole," says Dr. Ward,
" we must take it as a whole." 1 So if we want to under-
stand immediate experience as a whole we must take it
as a whole from the start, and in so doing, bear the
possibility of freedom with us from the beginning. This
is a point of fundamental importance, but need not be
insisted on any further in the present connection.
30. Closely connected again with this defect, is the
fact that Indeterminism is mere Formalism. For it
does not show us freedom as issuing out of the nature
of anything, not even of the free subject himself, still
less out of the fundamental character of immediate ex-
perience, but as starting suddenly upon the scene like
an apparition at the Egyptian Hall.
And yet despite these three objections it may be
urged against us in conclusion that the notion of relative
independence, inasmuch as it connotes real independence,
is shared alike by ourselves and the Indeterminists.
This, it will be said, is the characteristic mark of Inde-
terminism, and the objections brought forward, are not
so much objections to Indeterminism itself, as to a
certain species of Indeterminism from which we choose
to differ. If this rejoinder be made, if it be thought that
the objections do not constitute points of difference
radical enough to suggest a difference truly generic, this
further discussion must be relegated to metaphysics.
Psychology — at least the Psychology we have in view —
accepts a relative yet real independence as fundamentally
present in the central fact of immediate experience. It
is for metaphysics to analyse this independence and to
1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 87.
1 66 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
find out, if it can, how it can be or cannot be at one and
the same time, both real and relative. That it cannot
be indeterminate and is certainly relatively independent,
and so free in the genuine sense of the word, remains
meanwhile the working conviction of the Psychology of
Immediate Experience.
Part II. The Psychology of First Causes: A Fun-
damental Distinction stated and applied
§ i 3. Perhaps one of the most suggestive facts in connec-
tion with the present state of Psychology, is the marked
way in which it holds aloof from the problem of Freedom.
" Psychology, like every other science," writes Hoffding,
" must be deterministic, that is to say, it must start from
the assumption that the causal law holds good even in
the life of the will, just as this law is assumed to be valid
for the remaining conscious life and for material nature,
If there are limits to this assumption, they will coincide
with the limits to Psychology."1 James speaks in a
precisely similar manner though with less right, seeing
that the form in which he states his theory of free effort
brings it inevitably within the scope of psychological
enquiry. The theory, as is well known, concerns simply
" duration and intensity " of mental effort. " The question
of fact in the free-will controversy," he writes, " is extremely
simple. It relates solely to the amount of effort of
attention which we can at any time put forth. Are the
duration and intensity of this effort fixed functions of the
object, or are they not ? " 2 Still, despite this purely
psychological turn which Professor James gives to the
problem, he is quite decided that the question of free-
will should be kept out of Psychology. " Psychology as a
would-be ' science,' must, like every other science, postulate
complete determinism in its facts, and abstract consequently
from the effects of free-will even if such a force exists."3 The
free effort of Indeterminism is " an independent variable,"
1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 345.
2 James, Text-Book of Psychology, p. 456. a Ibid. p. 238.
i„ THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 167
and " wherever there are independent variables,1 there
science stops." 2 Hence, he adds, " So far as our volitions
may be independent variables, a scientific Psychology
must ignore that fact, and treat of them only so far as
they are fixed functions." 3
Now the question before us is the following : — Is this
deterministic assumption a necessary postulate of scientific
inquiry? Are we, as Psychologists, compelled to ignore
the question of freedom ? If so, what conceivable relation
can there be between Psychology and the problem of
Freedom ? By way of answering this question, we propose
to make a distinction between what we hold to be two
radically different treatments of the Science of Psychology,
each of which has its own separate problem and method
of solving it. We propose to state this distinction as briefly
and plainly as we can, to develop it, and lastly to apply it to
the solution of certain fundamental confusions that still
attach to the conception of Psychology as a Natural
Science.
1. Statement of the Distinction
There is at present a fruitful, highly-developed, and
rapidly self-differentiating Science usually known as
Empirical Psychology. In its methods and aims it
completely resembles the procedure of the physical
Sciences. It shares the same postulate — that of a
universal determinism — and hence also the same con-
ception of what is to constitute a legitimate explanation.
In so far as such method falls short of the ideal method
of the physical model, such deficiency is due, not to any
lack of faith in the efficacy of the method or the postulate,
1 It would be a much truer use of language to say that Science cannot stand
until it has acquired its independent variables, than to say that it must stop
because it finds them. The calculus is built up upon the independent variable,
as all considerations of velocity and acceleration presuppose time as the inde-
pendent variable. Of course the independent variables of Mathematical Physics
are only relatively independent, and indeed their independence is a mere mathe-
matical fiction, but this difference in the two meanings of independent variable,
the mathematical and the libertarian, helps to bring out the absoluteness of
James's conception of free effort.
2 James, Text-Book of Psychology , p. 455. 3 Ibid. p. 457.
168 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
but to the intractability of the subject-matter. Thus Dr.
Sigwart, after laying down the inductive method as the
ideal method even in Psychology — in default of the
deductive — adds the following words : — " A process quite
parallel to the induction of Natural Science is, however,
opposed partly by the impossibility of measuring psychical
phenomena, partly by the variability of psychical subjects
in consequence of their development, and partly by the
great differences between individuals which are to some
extent connected with this development. Except there-
fore within the sphere of Psychophysics in the narrower
sense, we cannot hope to establish exact general laws, by
which the concrete temporal course of successive events
in Consciousness would be determined on all sides in an
unmistakable way." x
It is from the point of view of this purely Inductive
Psychology that the deterministic assumption becomes a
necessity of method. All Inductive Sciences presuppose
determinism 2 for the very simple and general reason that
they are concerned with the discovery of laws, i.e., of
uniformities descriptive of the actions and interactions of
the material considered. Hence from the point of view
of Empirical Psychology, Hoffding is perfectly justified in
stating that the limits of psychical determinism would
mark the limits of Psychology.
But, as we have already pointed out in the first Part of
this Essay, this purely inductive treatment of Psychology
is not the only conceivable form of treatment, nor is it,
indeed, that form of treatment which the peculiar subject-
matter of Psychology essentially demands. There is the
inner, vital, truly causal point of view, a point of view not
only individualistic but inward, which, accepting as its
fundamental assumption the duality of subject and object
1 Logic, Eng. trans, ii. p. 374.
2 Throughout this inquiry we conceive the Inductive Method specifically as a
Method founded on the Mechanical postulate, the postulate of universal de-
terminism. This postulate represents the demand which science makes for
Mechanical Explanations, the test or standard of legitimate explanation. It is
surely not untrue to affirm that if a suggested explanation violates this postulate
of mechanical connection, Science will have none of it. The essential limitation
of this method and its Postulate, we take to be this, that it does not and cannot
recognise explanation by final causes, in any genuine sense of the term.
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 169
within the unity of experience, accepts with it the freedom
or relative independence of the subject as its fundamental
fact. The distinction, then, that we propose to make
is that between the now well-established Inductive
Psychology, on the one hand, and this inward Science of
Free Agency on the other, and the first distinctive feature
of difference between these two Psychologies we take to
be this, that whilst the Science of Free Agency accepts
the capacity for real freedom as its fundamental fact, the
Inductive Psychology unreservedly accepts the determin-
istic assumption as its only possible working postulate.
A second fundamental difference between the two treat-
ments, a difference we cannot here do more than indicate,
is to be found in the fact that whereas Inductive
Psychology aims at discovering laws and combinations of
laws, and at tracing uniformities within the psychical life,
the newer — or the older — Psychology aims at showing
how the free causal agency with which it is primarily
concerned determines its own development. Were the
term self-determination less ambiguous and difficult than
it is, it might not be amiss to characterise this inward
treatment of the psychical life as the Psychology of Self-
Determination ; but as this well-worn expression is
somewhat too pliant for purposes of distinction, the
more startling though by no means desperate name of
" the Psychology of first causes " would, we think, be
found to hit the point more firmly and more truly. We
must leave the title to defend itself in the pages that
follow, noting simply in the meantime that any difficulties
which the term " first causes " may awaken are not for
Psychology to solve. It is not the business of Psycho-
logy to make easy the task of Metaphysics. Its duty is
to state its assumptions as to the nature of individual
experience, accept as real the facts which that assumption
necessitates, and then to push boldly forward with a
sound conscience on its own lines. Let us now proceed
to a more developed statement of what is assumed in a
Psychology of first causes, and to a more definite treat-
ment of its relation to Inductive Psychology.
170 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m
2. Development of the Distinction
§ 14. I propose to start with the following definition.
Psychology is the Science of Immediate Experience
considered primarily from the point of view of the
experient and only secondarily from the point of view
of an external observer. This definition, it will be
noticed, differs apparently from the customary definition
of a Science in that it is so worded as to include not only
the statement of the subject-matter of the science but also
the point of view from which that subject-matter is to be
regarded. The inclusion of point of view within a
definition may seem unusual and require justification. It
is unusual, no doubt, to define a Science in terms of its
point of view but this is not because the statement of the
point of view is unessential to the definition, but simply
because it is always presupposed that the point of view is
that of the external observer, of an observer, that is, whose
method is conditioned by the decisive fact that he
approaches his data from the outside. If Geology and
Psychology had been the only two sciences ever studied
we should have had to include within our definition of
Geology the statement that the point of view taken
throughout was exclusively that of the external observer.
The objection, however, will probably be raised that as
the definition of a Science includes as a rule only the
statement of its subject-matter, the additional reference to
a point of view is, to say the least, gratuitous unless it can
be shown that the subject-matter will be differently
treated according as the one point of view or the other is
taken ; and the objection may be supported by the
contention that whether the point of view taken be that
of the experient or of the external observer, the mode of
treatment will always remain the same, consisting, in
short, in the method of Scientific Induction. Now this
contention in so far as it insists on no element being
admitted into the definition of a science which does not
directly or indirectly serve to specify its subject-matter,
must be accepted as valid, and it is only our conviction
m THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 171
that the view-point in this case does affect the treatment
of the subject-matter that has determined its inclusion.
The statement, however, that scientific induction is the
only conceivable method which can do justice to the facts
of the mental life is the very statement we are bent on
disputing. Scientific Induction is a method born of the
needs of the physical sciences, a method which aims at
unifying the phenomena of a science within an organised
system of laws of an essentially hypothetical character ;
it is in short a method that expresses not the necessary
mode of activity of mind as such in the presence of a
given subject-matter but its mode of procedure when
treating this subject-matter from the point of view of the
external observer whether in sense-perception or in
introspection. For when we say that the point of view
from which the experient considers his own immediate
experience fundamentally determines the way in which
that experience shall be treated, we have not mere
Introspection, as such, in mind. Introspection, as the
name implies, is no doubt a psychological point of view, a
form of observation, and not, as it is often loosely called
a " source " or a " method," but the method adopted in
Introspection, may as assuredly be that of scientific
induction as is the method adopted in Comparative
Psychology. The point of view of the experient is in fact
not to be identified with that of the inner spectator in
Introspection, but is the point of view of one who,
approaching his subject-matter from the inside, does not
pass from disconnected data to uniformities that combine
them, from the ceaseless flux of conscious states to the
laws by which it is ordered, but from the very outset
starts with the unities of mind, and from the vital
interests and aims which express them. For the
experient the real fundamentals are not fact and law but
appetite and its satisfaction, or more specifically, to use
Dr. Stout's own expression," the self-realisation of conscious
purpose." In a word it is the essentially vital point of
view. Let me give an illustration which I trust will not
be pressed too far. The participators in an orchestral
172 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
concert may be divided into three classes, those who are
outside the walls of the concert hall and have at best only
the sounds at their disposal to symbolise what is going on
within the walls, the ticket-holders inside who not only hear
the sounds but see how they are being produced, and
finally the performers themselves who are not only aware
of the sounds and the processes that give them, but
inwardly realise the hidden unities of purpose and
interests of which all else is but the means or the
expression. Thus at any moment of the performance the
outer spectator, we will say, experiences a sound, the
inner spectator in addition the workings to which the
sound is due, and the performer himself the inspiration of
of the musical purpose and interest which is the source
and fountain-head of all that is happening.
No one can use the term " vital " nowadays without
some word of apology or at least of explanation. Mine
need only be brief. If life and mind are treated as
coextensive, a hypothesis by no means disproved by the
facts, and if life further is not treated as an impenetrable
tertium quid between matter and mind, but merely as
that which makes mental development possible and gives
it its true inward quality, then the term " vital " fulfils a
function which no other term can fulfil so well. That it
should have no specific bearing on the explanations of the
physiologist or biologist is due simply to the fact that it
is purposely and profitably ignored by all investigators
who do not need to consider mind as an influential factor,
or to recognise any selective agency other than that of
natural selection. But a science of immediate experience
is in a different position, and psychologists who neglect
the vital factor with all that it involves, are mere inner
spectators, not experients, and can at best, like Wundt,
reach the conception of mental development as that of a
very complex system of reciprocal interactions between
the parts of the process.
The spectators' points of view, with their methods of
scientific induction, are of course as essential for the full
development of psychological science as is the more vital
hi THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 173
point of view, but they do not seize the subject at its
heart. They miss the inner significance of mental
development as a continuous acquisition of meanings and
values, and they miss the true explanatory syntheses that
dominate the development, finding them not in the
fundamental factors or motives of that development but
in laws of psychical or physical causality. Let us refer
again to the case of Wundt. Wundt, like Fouillee, insists
on the notion of Psychology as a science of immediate
experience, as a science that starts, not from a number
of generalised concepts, but from the actuality of the
individual mind itself. But while insisting on the in-
dependent nature of psychical processes, he has not
shown how this independence of nature gives proof of its
independence in determining mental development, but he
has treated the development analytically after a rigorously
inductive fashion. The main problem which mental
development offers to the psychologist, according to
Wundt, is the discovery of the laws, the psychical laws,
whereby its uniformities and connections may be seized ;
and these laws differ from the simpler laws of relation and
combination that characterise psychical activity in com-
plexity only, the interconnection with which they are
concerned being of a more intricate and comprehensive
kind. Thus instead of showing how development is deter-
mined through its own vital syntheses Wundt lays stress
on certain fundamental forms which such determination
takes. It is the spectator's and not the vital point of view.
It would indeed be a step in the direction of greater
clearness were these so-called laws of mental development
referred to not as " laws " but as " forms." The laws of
" mental growth," " heterogeny of ends," and of " develop-
ment towards opposites " as treated by Wundt, are they
not rather descriptive forms affording a comprehensive
bird's-eye view over the phenomena of mental develop-
ment, than " causal laws of mental development " ? The
reason given for calling them " causal " laws is that they
are found by a process of induction precisely similar to
that employed in discovering the causal laws of Nature.
174 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
m
"Just as the nature of physical causality," says Wundt,
"can be revealed to us only in the fundamental laws of
Nature, so the only way we have of accounting for the
characteristics of psychical causality is to abstract certain
fundamental laws of psychical phenomena from the
totality of psychical processes."
Now this reasoning is to my mind quite unsound.
Granting that the nature of physical causality can be
revealed to us only in the fundamental laws of Nature,
we must find the reason for this in the fact that we are
here dealing with that aspect of experience which shows
us change and the occasions of change in abstraction
from any inner activities that may be ultimately re-
sponsible for the change. But in inward experience
what we are most intimately aware of is precisely the
causal activity we abstract from when we view the object
from the outside. Here we are not compelled by the
nature of the case to be content with the revelation of
cause in the observable form of law, but are at liberty to
study causes at first hand, and the processes whereby they
conspire to determine their own effects. It is not true
then that the only way we have of accounting for the
characteristics of psychical causality is to do as Wundt
bids us, — 'Standing over our inner experiences, as it were,
with a view to threading them together as best we may,
and calling the result " laws of psychical causality." We
are prepared, on the contrary, to maintain that such laws
are not laws of psychical causality at all, any more than
the laws of change and interchange of inert masses are
laws of physical causality. All causes are first causes.
Otherwise they are mere effects within an endless chain
of events, and have no determinative power whatsoever :
they transmit, but do not determine. Where, as in
abstract Physics we are restricted to the continuous
changes of an energy that has neither beginning nor end,
transforming itself indefinitely within the two endless
continua of Space and Time, there is no place for
causality, but only for varying effects due to varying
relations of position, speed, etc., between the moving
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 175
masses. The world for Physics is one vast continuous
effect taking the form of change, and its problem is to
discover the laws not which regulate or determine, but
according to which are regulated or determined, these
never-ceasing changes.
It seems then a very questionable plan to import a
pis-aller method of scientific procedure from a sphere
where it seems the only one available, into another where
causal methods in the genuine sense of the word are at
once suggested by the facts themselves. Psychology
will of course always require those methods that seek
for law in default of cause, as so much of the material
it takes in hand presents just those features which have
compelled the physicist in his own sphere to restrict his
attention to laws of change. But this is no reason why
experience in what is most vital and essential to it should
not be treated according to its own nature, instead of
having its inwardly experienced development brought
under the same forms of inductive procedure as are
adopted when discussing the development of a nebula,
say, into a system of suns and worlds. In the latter
case we can discuss the development only from the out-
side, whereas in the case of self-experience, we have to
get outside of ourselves before we can take up the
spectator's point of view. .
What then is this truly causal procedure proper to
the vital view-point, and to the vital view-point only ?
If we are debarred from law are we not debarred from
order as well, and even from intelligibility ? In answer
to this we may say in the first place that if law is defined
as the means whereby order and intelligibility are intro-
duced within the flow of events, the choice can only lie
between law and nescience. But a synthesis that de-
termines some drift of mental development is not a mere
law descriptive of the process it both induces and directs
but is the cause of that process in the only true sense of
the word, that namely of a cause in action, working out
its own ends in conformity with its own nature. The
nature of a causal agency is one thing, laws which
176 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
describe the conditions under which that activity works
quite another : the former may be best described as a
synthetic principle that explains change, the latter as a
description of some constant and general feature charac-
teristic of this change. It would not be amiss, I think,
were we to go a step farther than we went just now in
advocating the distinction between " law " and " form,"
and suggest that the word principle be restricted to this
strictly causal, synthetic point of view, so that all principles
should be by definition principles of the nature and
action of first causes and synthetic agencies. We should
then be able to say of every principle, that it was not a
law, or preferably, a form, and of every law that it was
not a principle, but only the statement of some descriptive
uniformity. We should talk then of the Form, or Law,
or Theory, but not of the Principle, of Gravitation, we
should talk of the principle of subjective selection, so far
as by that we referred to a synthetic causal activity of
Consciousness, but of the form, law, or theory of natural
selection.
815. That Consciousness is essentially a synthesis has
been since Kant's day a widely accepted doctrine of Psycho-
logy,1 but it plays even in the most modern text-books a
formal rather than a causal role. The circumstances under
which the problem arose, are no doubt largely responsible
for this. It was set by Hume in such a way as to bring
to the front the conception of the Unity of Consciousness
as a combining form rather than as a causal agency.
Either conception would have served to give that co-
herency to the flow of Consciousness which the problem
required for its solution. But the former was given
and has prevailed ever since. Let us consider Hoffding's
treatment of the Unity of Consciousness by way of
illustration. " The peculiarity of the phenomena of
Consciousness as contrasted with the subject-matter of
the science of external nature," he says, " . . . is precisely
that inner connection between the individual elements
in virtue of which they apppear as belonging to one and
1 Cf. , e.g., Hoffding, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 47, 48, 49, 117, 138, 140.
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 177
the same subject."1 This is, as Hoffding himself confesses,
a purely formal conception, but it is not therefore barren.
For it is not only the fundamental form, but also the
fundamental condition 2 or presupposition of conscious
activity as we know it. Thus " it is only because one
and the same self is active in all opposing elements that
their mutual relation comes into Consciousness." 3 More-
over this formal character of the Unity of Consciousness
which distinguishes it from all material connections is
sufficient to disprove as a Psychological absurdity any
attempt to combine two egos or Consciousnesses into one
ego.4 Finally this formal unity is not only the general
form and presupposition of all conscious activity but runs
like a connecting thread through all the specific forms
which that activity takes. " The nature of the ego is
manifested in the combination of the sensations, ideas, and
feelings, and in the forms and laws of the combination." 5
This formal conception of the Unity of Consciousness
has no doubt its conveniences. It is economical and
easily understood. But it is an abstract, non-psycho-
logical conception, and has proved quite as misleading
as it has proved useful. Hoffding, indeed, realises that
there is a real aspect of the Unity of Consciousness as
well as a formal aspect. " The form of Consciousness,"
he says, " is common to all conscious beings ; individuality
consists in the definite content which is embraced by the
formal unity," b consists essentially, in fact, in a dominant
vital feeling ; 7 but even as a feeling its function is
simply that of keeping the concrete life of the individual
together, a unifying, combining function. But it is at
least not abstract, and that is a distinct gain to the
psychological value of the conception.
Quite recently a definite attempt has been made to
emphasise the causal aspect of this synthetic activity of
Consciousness. I allude to Dr. Stout's conception of
conative unity or unity of interest. It supplies a triple
1 Hoffding, Outlines of Psychology, p. 47. 2 Ibid. p. 136.
s Ibid. p. 140 ; cf. also p. 117.
4 Ibid. p. 138. 5 Ibid. p. 136. « Ibid. p. 139, cf. also p. 49.
7 So Wundt, cf. Outlines of Psychology, Eng. trans, p. 221.
N
178 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
m
need. In the i° place it is a real vital unity, consisting
not in a mere feeling but containing all the elements
that enter into a complete attitude of Consciousness :
appetition, feeling-tone, and attentive or cognitive aspect ;
(20) it is a causal agency, not a mere combining activity ;
(30) it is a workable conception of the synthetic unity
of Consciousness.
Now I do not propose to develop in any way these
three notable contributions to the science of Psychology.
There is, however, one remark I should wish to make.
Readers of the " Manual " will, I think, discover that
though there is no explicit recognition in those pages
of the distinction we have been attempting to draw, that
the distinction nevertheless exists, and is stated if not
explicitly, yet in principle. For Dr. Stout maintains
that the central interest of Psychology consists in the
study of mental development as the self-realisation of
conscious purpose in " the study of conscious endeavour,
as a factor in its own fulfilment " 1 and shows how
continuity of interest and of attention is the principle
which, when articulately developed under the impetus
given by objects, is the determinative explanatory
principle in both reproduction and association. More-
over, and this seems most important, Dr. Stout, following
up Mr. Bradley's famous distinction in the opening pages
of his Principles of Logic, has presented this mental
development to us as consisting essentially in acquisition
of meaning. The stages in mental development are
represented as " stages in the evolution of meaning
towards definiteness and explicitness." 2 Now there
seems ground for maintaining that just in so far as
mental development is presented in the light of an
evolution of meanings and values, it is presented from
the truly inward point of view and from the point of
view which can alone furnish a living and a suitable
psychological basis for Ethics, ^Esthetics, and the Theory
1 This phrase is taken out of a course of lectures by Dr. Stout on the
Fundamentals of Psychology. The italics are mine.
2 Dr. Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 89.
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 179
of Knowledge in their inward aspects. The attempt
made in this Essay towards establishing a certain
fundamental distinction of psychological treatment, may
accordingly be viewed as an addendum to the Manual,
for it was suggested by reflecting on the necessary
implications of the Theory of Conation as elaborated
in that important work.
We come now to our last point. We have stated
and developed under such inspiration as we have already
acknowledged what we believe to be a fundamental and
important distinction. It remains for us to show that
the distinction is not an arbitrary, manufactured product,
but a fruitful and explanatory principle.
3. Application of the Distinction
§ 16. Psychology, we are told, is a Natural Science.
Let us examine this commonplace statement and see
whether it is after all quite so satisfactory and free from
ambiguity as at first sight it appears.
It is generally asserted or understood, in the first
place that, as a Natural Science, Psychology must be
concerned both with describing and explaining the
subject-matter of which it treats, but when we come to
close quarters with this distinction between the descriptive
and the explanatory functions of the science we meet
with strange inconsequences that leave us with a mind
all in confusion. Thus we find Prof. James starting with
the conception of Psychology as a Natural Science with
an explanatory function to fulfil,1 and closing with the
conviction that it is after all only a Natural History 2
and cannot do more than describe the states of
Consciousness it set out to explain ; whilst, on the other
hand, Dr. Stout himself, after telling us blankly at the
outset that Psychology " has only to do with the natural
history of subjective processes as they occur in time," 3
heroically proceeds to furnish us with the very explanatory
agencies that are needed to bring true science into
1 James, Text-book of Psychology, p. i. 2 Ibid. p. 468.
3 Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 6.
1 8o W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
history and justify the claim of Psychology to pose as
an explanatory science.
Here then is a first ambiguity. In stating that
Psychology is a Natural Science, do we mean that it is
merely descriptive, or explanatory as well, — a mere
Natural History or a genuine Science ?
A second ambiguity the issues of which are closely
involved with those of the first arises from the fact that
to many minds " science " and " mechanical science " are
synonymous terms. In calling Psychology a Natural
Science these mechanists hold in reserve the latent con-
viction that it is a Science only so far as Cerebral
Physiology is able to afford it firm mechanical support.
To such the notion of a teleological science is a contra-
dictio in adjecto if it denotes a return to what they
conceive to be the superstition of final causes ; but is
otherwise harmless and even useful in so far as it serves
merely to describe a feature of psychical phenomena that
can be explained, or rather explained away, by natural
selection. Thus Prof. James is able to preface his con-
viction that Psychology is now "on the materialistic
tack"1 and must be allowed full headway in its
mechanically directed course, with an approval of another
" gradually growing conviction " of modern thought,
that " mental life is primarily teleological." 2
Here then is a second ambiguity. In stating that
Psychology is a Natural Science, do we mean that it is
a mechanical science, a teleological science, or both ?
Now in addition to these two positive sources of
ambiguity due to our uncertainty as to what we do mean
when we talk of Psychology as a Natural Science, we
are met by others equally confusing so soon as we
attempt to decide what we do not mean when we make
that same assertion. Of these the two most important
are those associated — (i°), with the distinction between
"natural" and "normative"; (20) with the distinction
between " natural " and " metaphysical." Let us briefly
consider in turn each of these familiar distinctions. In
1 James, Text-book of Psychology, p. 3. - Ibid. p. 4.
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 181
the first place we must draw attention to the fact that
either distinction can be made as obvious as we please,
and be so stated as to give us no more trouble, provided
we are content to follow a line of treatment by which
clear dualisms can always be extracted from the most
entangled dualities. This consists briefly in abstracting
the respective differentia of the two members of the
antithesis for the purposes of distinction, and abstracting
away all else so as to leave a clear space intervening for
the exclusive use of the mind in its to-and-fro passages
in between. Thus, to take the first antithesis, all chance
of mutual interference between the opposing terms is
removed by stating that natural science deals with the
" mere is," and normative discipline with the " should
be " or the " ought," provided the further stipulation is
made that the " is " is a mere question of events or
occurrences, obeying fixed laws of their own in com-
plete indifference to the ends towards which they
may be diverted by a regulative discipline. Thus the
machinery of association is paraded as a mere " is "
which thinking can freely regulate in conformity with
ideals of which the machinery gives no hint. A difficulty
arises, however, when we seek to render intelligible this
relation between the " is " and the " ought " in conformity
with the principles of Continuity.1 The attempt is then
made as a rule to show that the ideal is immanent in the
actual, and only needs a little elaboration to fulfil a true
regulative office ; unfortunately the processes whereby
the actual assimilates and digests the ideal are not
usually well-considered, so that the device comes to
nothing more than the trick of conveying the ideal into
the actual, and then withdrawing it when needed, with
all the deftness and complacency of a prestidigitist.
Indeed it must be so unless the " is " is otherwise
understood than as a serious of " occurrences " or mere
"events in time." Hence this distinction on closer view
reveals ambiguities and uncertainties of a fundamental
1 Cf. the blank amazement of Professor Liebmann in that most delightful
chapter " Gehirn und Geist " of his book Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit.
1 82 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
kind. The same must be said of the relation between
the natural and the metaphysical. Whilst it is true that
no science whose assumptions are abstract in this sense,
that they are not assumptions as to the nature of Reality,
can resent as an interference the metaphysician's
criticism of this assumption in the light of his more
ultimate conceptions, it is quite otherwise when, as in the
case of the more inward treatment of Psychology, the
initial assumptions that are made are assumptions as to
the nature of Reality — from the point of view, at any-
rate, of individual experience. The question must then
be asked : "Is a Psychology that makes assumptions, or
postulates as to the nature of Reality, to be regarded as
a natural or as a metaphysical science ? " and together
with it this further question : " Is Metaphysics then a
Science without assumptions, and if not, how are we to
distinguish between a Psychology that makes assumptions
as to the nature of Reality and a Metaphysics that does
precisely the same thing ? "
These existing ambiguities now stated, we proceed to
show to what extent they can be unravelled by the help
of the distinction between the Inductive Psychology and
the Psychology of first causes. We have four questions
to ask and answer: —
i°. Can Psychology justly lay claim to be an ex-
planatory science or is its function merely
descriptive ?
2°. Is Psychology a mechanical or a teleological
science ?
3°. In what relation does Psychology stand to the
normative sciences ?
4°. In what relation does Psychology stand to Meta-
physics ?
i°. Is Psychology a Descriptive or an Explanatory
Science?
§ \y. In answer to the first query we would unhesitat-
ingly maintain that Inductive Psychology, in so far, at any
rate as it is Psychology and not a schematised Physiology,
m THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 183
is a merely descriptive Science. From this point of view
the effort of Inductive Psychology as represented by Prof.
James and in a more systematic though less convincing
manner by the school of Avenarius, to make cerebral laws
responsible for the explanation of psychical effects, is
readily intelligible ; for it is, so far as I can see, the only
quasi-explanatory outlet for the exclusive devotee of
Inductive Psychology. The line of reasoning which these
cerebral explicants take is put very clearly by Mr. Petzoldt
in his recently published Introduction to the Philosophy
of Pure Experience. It consists essentially in the
following argument : — The only intelligible principle
of explanation is that founded on the thoroughgoing
unideterminism of events. Such unideterminism is not
anywhere traceable within the mental sphere. Mental
processes must therefore either remain permanently
inexplicable or be explained through their connections
with material processes, for these alone proceed uni-
determinately. As all known facts agree in showing that
the only material processes in immediate relation with
psychical processes are the processes of the brain, it
follows irresistibly that if there is to be a science of mind
at all, psychical processes must be conceived of as the
dependent concomitants of brain-processes and receive
their unideterminateness through their connection with
these. And the conclusion runs : " If this is not so, then
mental science is a mere descriptive phantasmagoria, in
plainer words an illusion."
Here we have the clear statement of the pass to which
we are reduced when we insist on the psychical life being
regulated like the object-matter of the physicist on the
lines of a strictly mechanical unideterminateness. We
are obliged to make the reality of immediate experience
dependent for its intelligibility on physiological sequences
of a more or less manufactured and fictitious kind, for as
Lewes himself puts it — and the remark is abundantly
verified in the character of the Avenarian method —
much that passes as a physiological explanation of mental
facts is simply the translation of those facts in terms of a
1 84 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
physiology that is merely hypothetical.1 Still if a
hypothetical physiological scheme is the only form that
psychical explanation can ultimately take, it must be
welcomed as supplying at least provisionally a much-felt
want, and we who accept it must reconcile ourselves as
best we may to the absurdities, the dualisms, and the
scepticisms which are its inseparable concomitants.
I cannot see, however, that we are under any necessity
to trace out our explanations of psychical processes by
the aid of the ideal scalpel of the Avenarians. Human
intelligence having got the idea of causality from the
action of the relatively independent agencies in immediate
experience, introduces it into its study of external pheno-
mena under the name of Force. It abandons this
concept, however, as superfluous so soon as it is able to
replace it by the more systematic conception of Law,
of unidetermining law. This twice -refined product of
shadowy thought is then reintroduced, a ghost of a ghost,
into its original home. It has no longer anything
psychical about it, but is a breathless, mechanical, and
purely fictitious creature ; yet its plain duty, we are told,
is to oust from the mental life all causal agencies that are
not of its own rarefied kind, and to exercise full sway over
the soulless dregs or "states" of consciousness that persist
even after all original causal agency has been withdrawn.
One can hardly help thinking that this unidetermining
fiction from the ideal realm of abstract physics resents
even the presence of these submissive fragments of
mentality, and would fain have a free field in which to
recreate consciousness afresh after its own heart. Perhaps
the post-Avenarians will bring us to this ere long.
These remarks are of course not aimed at the inductive
treatment of psychical processes and states, which is as
essential and important as it is limitedly descriptive, but
1 Quoted by Alfred Fouillee, Psychologie des 1 'dies- Forces, i. p. 252 ; cf.
also James, Text-Book of Psychology, p. 278: — " Truly the day is distant when
physiologists shall actually trace from cell-group to cell-group the irradia-
tions which we have hypothetically invoked. Probably it will never arrive.
The schematism we have used is, moreover, taken immediately from the
analysis of objects into their elementary parts, and only extended by analogy to
the brain."
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 185
only at such pseudo- Psychology as goes to its own
physiological fictions for causal explanations in the spirit
of the savage who seeks his counsel from the idols of his
own making. Such flimsy usurpation of the true ex-
planatory function of free spiritual agency has surely been
tolerated all too long, seeing how wholly gratuitous it
undoubtedly is. For in actual concrete experience, we
are presented at first hand with a living causal agency,
continuously effective in mental development, to ignore
whose effective presence is to ignore the whole inwardness
and power of the psychical life, to treat it as something
husk and hollow and as cleanly devitalised as abstractive
power can make it.
Inductive Psychology with its deterministic assumption
necessarily ignores this vital factor as the regulating agent
in mental development. In doing so it excludes the
natural causal factor and is logically doomed to a purely
descriptive function. Inductive Psychology we repeat, is
necessarily and exclusively descriptive. The so-called
causal connections between stimulus and sensation, can
be causal only so far as causal agency is recognised in
the material world as a real inherent factor, and the idea
of " force" as no longer a mere subjectively valid concept.
But such a recognition of the rights of force in the
material world implies a recognition of the relative
independence of the objective factor in immediate experi-
ence, and this again implies a recognition of the relative
independence of the subject within the unity of that
experience, a recognition, that is, of a certain free, causal
agency as an effective factor in mental development.
The original free-will and force, its correlate, depend
together. Once free psychic agency is ignored by the
necessities of a deterministic science, the correlate force
has no longer any right of presence but must sink to the
rank of a mere convenient figment of the physicist's
speech to give way eventually, first to energy and then to
the pure law of a pure unideterminism.
It is only then in its truly inward aspect that
Psychology is a genuine explanatory science. For it
1 86 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
deals there with free agency as the central, essential factor
in its own development, following the causal principle as
it were into all its effects and watching how out of such
effective work eventually grow the great ideal structures
of the Self and the World as systems of meaning and
value. Psychology, then, we may say in conclusion, is
descriptive or explanatory according as it is an inductive
Psychology or a Psychology of first causes and free
agencies, a Psychology studied from the outside or a
Psychology studied from the inward point of view of the
experient himself.
2C. Is Psychology a Mechanical or a Teleological
Science?
§ i 8. We have seen that as a purely inductive science
Psychology abstracts unreservedly from the relative
independence of the subject in immediate experience.
With the abstraction of this relative independence goes
all possibility of teleological explanation in Psychology
together with any and every other kind of explanation.
All that remains is the possibility of describing after the
mechanical pattern processes of a teleological kind. And
this is what inductive Psychology actually does in dealing
with mental development. But a science, as we would
say, is mechanical or teleological according as its method
is mechanical or teleological, hence Inductive Psychology
is essentially a mechanical science, inasmuch as its whole
method of procedure is modelled on that of the
mechanical sciences. It may take cognizance of the
adjustments of inward to outer relations, of adaptations of
means to ends, and the like, but its sole aim therein is to
bring these adjustments and adaptations within some
descriptive scheme of laws. In short, it seems impossible
to admit as teleological a science that treats teleological
data on the mechanical model, the model, that is, of a
descriptive treatment whose goal is the discovery of law
and uniformity everywhere and in everything. It would
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 187
be just as reasonable to talk of Physiology as a
teleological science.
As a science of first causes, however, the Psychology of
Immediate Concrete Experience is essentially teleological.
For its aim is to show how causes whose freedom can find
effect only in the selection of ends and the choice of
means to realise them, contrive to realise their ends in
virtue of a persistence of interest that continues active
despite all temporary interruption, until the ends are
reached. It is thus not only a science of first causes but of
final causes, and its method is that which is natural to such
a science, that, namely, of making the fundamental
principles of finality centrally responsible for the work of
explanation. We should accordingly be prepared to
maintain that as a science of first causes Psychology is
primarily and essentially teleological in its method, but
that as an inductive inquiry, its method is mechanical and
descriptive, and indeed so much so that the attempt to
take on explanatory functions inevitably leads, as the
history of the subject has shown, to the introduction into
Psychology of a purely mechanical scheme of explanation,
such as that of the physiological vital series of Avenarius.
3°. In what Relation does Psychology stand to the
Normative Sciences?
§ 1 9. The Psychology of the will to think correctly, or
of the will to act rightly, or of the will to feel deeply
the inspiration of beauty is in each of these three
directions of volition the science of a dominating funda-
mental interest. Thus as Dr. Sigwart reminds us in the
Introduction to his Logic, the function of Logic as a
normative discipline is to regulate that region of our
voluntary thinking, and that region only, which is
governed by the desire to think the truth. A
psychological analysis of the will to think correctly
implies, then, an analysis of a certain specific unity of
interest, interest in the true form or structure of
knowledge. Hence that Psychology which takes as its
1 88 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
fundamental problem the question as to how the mental
life is built up by the progressive differentiations and
interjunctions of such unities of conative effort, how, in a
word, unity of meaning is developed through unity and
continuity of interest in an object appears to me to stand
in a peculiarly intimate relation to these standard
disciplines, and that type of analysis which takes the form
of showing how unity of purpose is the central factor in
its own development, treating such unity of purpose as
the persistence of a free agent in its own self-directed ends
is the form of analysis naturally suited to bear the super-
structure of a normative discipline.
Inductive Psychology, on the other hand, appears to
supply loose material rather than a psychological basis
for normative science. It deals with the " is " of the
psychical life as a succession of events or occurrences and
seeks the uniformity of law amid the flux of mental
change. It thus seizes the mental life, not as a " self-
realising " process, to use a hazardous but expressive term,
but rather as a product of the reign of law, to be
analysed out into laws and their combinations. Failing
to seize the inner meaning of self-development, it fails ipso
facto in adapting its analysis to the inner requirements
of a regulative elaboration. Whereas the more inward
Psychology, through an analysis which ultimately takes
the form of a synthetic development of final causes, is
throughout concerned with a striving after what is better,
with an " is-ought " so to speak, Inductive Psychology is
only incidentally concerned with such a striving, and even
when busied with it, investigates its laws of development
from the same external point of view which Physics
adopts in investigating the facts of external nature. A
gap is thus left between the psychological analysis on the
one hand, and the elaborative treatment on the other,
which gives to the normative superstructure the look of
something shaped out of alien material, rather than of a
growth out of what is naturally akin to it.
It therefore seems to me that the continuity between
Psychology and the regulative disciplines can be truly
in THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 189
secured only when Psychology is considered from the
point of view of the experient, as the Psychology of the
first and final cause.
40. In what Relation does Psychology stand to
Metaphysics ?
8 20. Inductive Psychology stands to Metaphysics in
precisely the same relation as the physical sciences.
Physical Science abstracts at the start from all considera-
tions that are indifferent to it, and makes just such
assumptions with regard to its subject-matter as it requires
for its own best development. These postponed considera-
tions and conventional assumptions are then taken up by
the metaphysician, and furnish food for his reflection.
In such relation there seems no room for ambiguity.
Inductive Psychology has its abstract, limited point of
view, e.g., its deterministic assumption, and is therefore
amenable to metaphysical control in precisely the same
sense as in the science of mechanics. But the Psychology
of first causes is not so simply related to Metaphysics.
For it has this in common with Metaphysical inquiry
that both it and Metaphysics are equally interested in
the fundamental assumption as to the nature of Experience
upon which assumption its whole superstructure is based.
The two sciences seem to meet in the Theory of Know-
ledge, or to use a truer and more inclusive expression, in
the Theory of Experience. Is this more inward
Psychology, then, to be classed as an offspring of
Metaphysical Inquiry, or as more closely related to the
Natural Science of Inductive Psychology ?
In our opinion it is still a scientific Psychology and
not a Metaphysics. For (i°), though concerned with its
own assumptions it is not concerned with the assumptions
of any other Science, whereas Metaphysics is concerned
with assumptions in general ; (20) its aim is to explain
causally, so far as it is able, and from the inside, what
Inductive Psychology explains, so to speak, descriptively
and from the outside. Its subject-matter is therefore the
190 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON m
data of psychical experience and in so far as it has such
specific data, is more akin to a Science than to a Meta-
physics. Moveover (30), it does start with an assumption
as to the nature of Reality suited to its own peculiar
problem, and the mere fact of this assumption being made
seems to constitute a barrier-fact between the Science of
first causes and Metaphysics, even though the function of
Metaphysics be conceived as purely critical, and not as
consisting in the reconstruction of Reality on a basis free
from all assumptions.
Assuming then that we are entitled to regard the
Psychology of first causes as a Science and not as a
Metaphysic, it remains for us to point out that the
distinction between the two Psychologies, the inductive
and — as we may here suitably call it — the synthetic^
Psychology, affords a basis for a corresponding distinction
in the relation of Metaphysics to Psychology. The
essence of the inductive method is that it starts with a
medley of disconnected facts or data, and aims at dis-
covering hypotheses wherewith to connect and explain
the facts. These hypotheses are relatively to the facts
they seek to explain fluctuating and unstable. Inductive
procedure in a word starts with that which is to be
explained and aims at explanations which are always
hypothetical and liable to be superseded by others. That
which gives unity and explanatory coherency to inductive
science is just this hypothetical, fluctuating element.
Synthetic procedure, on the other hand, starts not with the
something that has to be explained, but with the ex-
planatory factors themselves, and its endeavour is to
justify the explanatory function of these factors. Hence,
whereas the unifying explanatory element in inductive
procedure is hypothetical, it is accepted in synthetic
procedure as the fundamental fact or factor. This
distinction made, Metaphysics, it seems, may, according
as its procedure is inductive or synthetic, become the
abstract science of ultimate hypotheses, or the concrete
science of the First Synthesis, Cause, or Universal
1 Synthetic in the teleological, not in the abstract logical, sense of the term.
Ill
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 191
Agency, the science of the Absolute in the sense of the
Whole. This science of a Synthetic Metaphysic would
stand to Psychology in some such relation as the Science
of the First Cause to the Science of first causes. But
the result is not here the important point ; rather the
nature of the relation. From which end, we ask, are we
to start in our endeavour to pass from Synthetic Psychology
to Synthetic Metaphysics ; from the Absolute or from
the Individual's Experience ? It seems to me that we
must start from the latter. A Science of synthesis may
find its culminating triumph in an all-inclusive and
explanatory Theism but it must surely grow out of much
humbler considerations. Immediate individual experience
is the one true vital synthesis whence all such synthetic
effort must assuredly start, for it is that which is ever-
present with us as the fountain-head of all our knowledge.
To be fruitful and progressive all synthetic Science whose
aim is to reconstruct the Real according to its own nature,
without abstracting from any essential feature of Reality
as it is known to us, must be rooted in the immediate ex-
perience of the individual first cause, and grow out thence
in some specific way. And if such growth should
eventually bring with it not only the larger vision of
Reality, but a simultaneous growth out of the individual-
istic starting-point altogether, — is this not both natural
and logically inevitable ? The roots of a tree grow and
ramify pari passu with the branches, and the mustard-tree
of the Kingdom of Knowledge is assuredly no exception
to this universal law of Expansion. The one essential
safeguard of concrete synthetic science we take to be this,
that it should from the very outset cleave to Reality,
grasp, that is, at something which shares the nature,
though it share not the fulness, of the Absolute. If the
limitedness of its point of view compels it to grapple
itself to Reality by the help of some assumption, the
assumption merely interprets the nature and scope of its
contact with Reality, and does not signify an abstract
remove of one or more degrees from such living contact
with the Real. Once at grasp with Reality, the logic of
192 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON
in
growth will surely justify it in bringing wider and yet
wider reaches of the Real within its compass, in passing
from one relative whole of Experience to another and yet
another, each more comprehensive and organic than the
one preceding it, until some fruitful vision of the whole
be reached. In some such way as this, perhaps, might
the Psychology of first causes prepare the way for the
Philosophy of the First Cause.
IV
THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION
By G. E. Underhill
I. The Problem
i. The relation of Philosophy to the Sciences.
2. Within what limits does the process of Evolution hold good ?
3. The meaning of Evolution.
II. Presuppositions of Evolution
4. a, Becoming.
5. b, One and Many.
6. c, Things.
7. d, Time and Space ; <?, Force.
III. Gaps in Nature and in Knowledge
8. Science, though it assumes the homogeneity of matter and that Nahira
rum facit saltum, recognises the gaps between the inorganic and the
organic, and between life and mind.
IV. Evolution in the Inorganic Sphere
9. Science regards even the chemical elements as evolved from homogeneous
matter according to eternal laws of motion.
10. Science (a) never deals with origins, (fi) aims to express differences of
quality in terms of quantity.
11. But differences of quality, though they have quantitative aspects, are not
mere differences of quantity : they are no less real and no more
phenomenal than differences of quantity.
12. The aspects of things, with which mechanical science deals, are products
of mental creation and are measured by standards which again are
products of mental creation.
13. Thus mechanical science limits its Evolution to the changes of position
and shape of homogeneous particles of matter according to eternal laws
of motion.
14. Natural Selection may be regarded as due to Chance, if by Chance is
meant a cause or causes unknown to human calculation. But ' blind •
Chance is not a possible object of science.
O
194 G. E. UNDERHILL ,v
V. Evolution in the Organic Sphere
15. Life is a factor in organisms, which presents problems distinct from their
mechanical and chemical aspects.
16. Life implies adaptation and with it the notion of Teleology.
1 7. The Evolution of organisms can only be ' explained ' by describing the
succession of consequent upon antecedent stages according to unchanging
biological laws.
18. Adaptation implies purpose ; though the metaphor is taken from human
adaptation of means to ends, science is not concerned to decide whether
such purpose is conscious or unconscious.
19. But philosophy sees in such purpose only one more instance of rational
agency in things, parallel to those laws of matter, motion and force,
which are capable of expression in rational terms.
VI. Evolution in the Sphere of Consciousness
20. The problem of Evolution is here generically the same as in biology :
given consciousness and certain permanent laws of mental processes,
successive stages in mental Evolution can be explained in the sense that
they can be described more or less accurately as happening in
accordance with such permanent laws.
VII. Results of the Inquiry
21. The Evolutionist (a) cannot deal with origins, {l>) must assume permanent
and unchanging laws of development, and (c) must discover relations
intelligible to his own reason.
22. The Darwinian Evolution is fundamentally the same as the Aristotelian
conception of Final Cause.
'0 /lev crvvoTTTLKo<; StaAfKTtKos, 6 Se /xr) ov.
I. The Problem
§ 1. No one has maintained more strongly than Plato the
close connection between philosophy and the special
sciences, and nowadays Mr. Herbert Spencer, following
boldly in his footsteps, has entitled his own work
Synthetic Philosophy, implying thereby that his own
aim is similarly to exhibit the relations of one science
to another and the relations of the whole body of
scientific truth to philosophy in general — to survey as
from a high watch tower the totality of relations that
constitute the universe. But in this age of specialisation
no mind is large enough and no life is long enough to
enable any single man to grasp even the principles of
all the separate sciences — much less the immense body
of truths that depend upon them. Even Mr. Spencer
after many years of incessant labour has been obliged
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 195
to omit two important volumes in his long series — the
two volumes which were to deal with the inorganic
kingdom and describe or explain the transition from
inanimate matter to things endowed with life. In fact,
the philosopher of the present day is at a distinct
disadvantage when compared with his predecessor of
even two or three generations ago. Descartes, Leibnitz,
Kant were leaders of science as well as philosophers,
and practically knew all that the science of their day
could teach them. The modern philosopher, more often
than not, has had no scientific training, and is dependent
for his general notions of scientific truth on second-hand
evidence or on authority. If by some chance or other he
excels in one science, he cannot excel in all. He has
too to contend against another difficulty, in some ways
even harder to meet. While he is but too well aware
of his own ignorance of the sciences, scientific men,
eminent in their own special branches, are by no means
so modest. They are apt to think, like the Athenian
artisans, of whom Socrates complained of old, that
because they know one thing well, they know all. And
more especially are they apt to think that they can lay
down the law with equal certainty in philosophical
subjects. Now, though it may be true that all men
who think at all, are bound to philosophise, it by no
means follows that they are bound to philosophise well.
Indeed philosophy, like science, needs its own special
training, and, if the study of it can reveal to us no royal
road to truth, yet it can warn us against many by-paths
which in past times have led men into hopeless errors,
and now stand as open as ever to allure the wanderer
from the truth : and into some of these the scientific
man, turned philosopher for the nonce, has shown himself
peculiarly ready to stray.
§ 2. The subject of the present essay is a modest one :
it is to consider, some forty years after the appearance
of Darwin's Origin of Species and of Spencer's First
Principles, the limits within which the theory of Evolution
seems to be applicable, and to consider them from a
196 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
philosophical point of view. The writer is well aware
of his own ignorance of the sciences, and can pretend
to no very deep or encyclopaedic study of philosophy.
Acute critics of every school have dealt, favourably or
unfavourably, with the various exponents of evolutional
doctrines — none more ably than Professor James Ward
in his four * brilliant lectures on " the Theory of
Evolution," wherein Mr. Spencer is the chief object of
his onslaught. The present writer, however, wishes to
deal, not so much with the truth or falsity of particular
views about Evolution, as with the general limits within
which the process of Evolution as such can ideally be
supposed to apply. Does the acceptance of Evolution
involve the iravra pel of Heraclitus as against the
Eleatic permanence of being ? or is it rather a case of
possible variations within constant fixed terms ?
S 3. Darwin, it is well known, hardly ventured on any
speculations outside the range of his own observations
upon plant and animal life. Hence the strength of his
position. Mr. Spencer would apparently extend the
evolutional process to the whole universe, though it
is by no means clear what he would wish to include
in the universe. When he tells us that " there is an
alternation of Evolution and Dissolution in the totality
of things," we not unnaturally suppose that he means
to include everything. Not so, however, for when he
speaks of force, he tells us : " By the persistence of Force,
we really mean the persistence of some Power which
transcends our knowledge and conception. The mani-
festations, as recurring either in ourselves or outside of
us, do not persist ; but that which persists is the
Unknown Cause of these manifestations." Again, he
asserts the existence of " an Unconditioned Reality,
without beginning or end." Perhaps indeed he would
not include force or power or the laws of nature under
the term things. Still as manifested to us, they are
certainly " phenomena," and if all phenomena are but
the manifestations of an "Unknown Cause" — be this
1 Cf. Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. i. p. 185 ff.
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 197
Unknown Cause mind or matter — it is hard to see
what differentia is left him, whereby to distinguish
things as phenomena from force, gravitation, etc., as
phenomena ; so that, if the process of Evolution is to
apply to all phenomena universally, it ought to be as
applicable to gravitation as it is to elephants. In fact
in Mr. Spencer's hands the term " Evolution " has passed
away entirely from its old and limited meaning of the *
" gradual unfolding of a living germ from its embryonic
beginning to its final and mature form," to the quite
different meaning of the " process by which the mass
and energy of the universe have passed from some
assumed prime'val state to that distribution which they
have at present." Evolution in this sense is, in a word,
the process of the World's Becoming.2 And it is in
this sense that many scientific men — let alone philo-
sophers— use the term quite outside its old limitation
to the development of vegetable and animal forms.
Thus Sir Norman Lockyer, in an article3 dealing with
recent attempts to trace the origin of the chemical
elements, habitually speaks of the Evolution of the
elements from something homogeneous to their present
heterogeneity.
It is then in this wider sense of ' Becoming ' that
the term ' Evolution ' will be used in this essay, and
it is the writer's object to deal with the presuppositions
which any philosophical account of the World's Becoming
in general or any scientific account of any Becoming
in particular must necessarily start.
II. Presuppositions of Evolution
S 4. The most obvious of all the presuppositions is
Becoming itself. It can only be taken as an ultimate
fact given us in immediate perception — a fact which
1 Ward, ibid. vol. i. p. 186.
2 Evolution is often denned as the gradual process of adaptation between
inner and outer relations, and doubtless it is so used in particular cases ; but
obviously there can be no evolution of the "universe" in this sense; for there
can be no outer relations, outside the universe.
3 Nature, lxi. p. 131 ff.
198 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
Thought as such can never grasp or explain. For Be-
coming is always continuous. Thought is successive.
A bar of iron at the temperature a is raised by heating
to the temperature /3. Though the process of heating
is continuous, Thought can only represent it to itself as
passing through a succession of stages x1, x2 . . . xn, each
one of which it can describe with greater or less accuracy.
Still in Thought a similar interval can equally well be
imagined to exist between x1 and x2, so that, however
exactly all these intermediate stages may be described,
the continuous process as such always defies description.
And necessarily so, for while Reality is concrete, Thought
is in its nature abstract, and as abstract is so far inadequate
to Things. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that
all the failures in philosophical and scientific explanations
are ultimately due to failure at some point or other to
recognise this fundamental difference between Thought
and Things. All explanation of whatsoever kind must
ipso facto be abstract and as such inadequate, though its
inadequacy is more often than not helped out by tacit
assumptions and additions, which we are so accustomed
to make that they escape our notice — assumptions and
additions derived from the most familiar processes of
immediate perception. To recur to the illustration of
the heating of the iron bar ; we often say that we
understand what is meant by its temperature being
raised from a to /3, when really we do not understand it
by Thought (for it is a continuous process), but only
either perceive it actually by our senses or else imagine
it. No explanation therefore can deal with a concrete
thing as a whole ; it can only deal with its various
aspects or states, so that the one and only way to avoid
error is to be perfectly aware, what abstraction has
actually been made, what other aspects have been
deliberately left out — aspects which must just as de-
liberately be added on before the explanation can pretend
to any completeness. The Pythagorean attempt to
explain Things by numbers is one of the most obvious
of such mistakes. Nowadays it may indeed sound
,v THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 199
absurd to say that because all things are numerable,
they must therefore be caused by numbers. But are
modern philosophers quite sure that because they have
outgrown this particular error, they are quite free from
the taint of the same fallacy ? Is there not a similar
error in thinking that because all things are material
and in motion, therefore they must have not only their
ultimate, but their complete explanation in terms of
matter and motion, whatever other qualities they may
possess in addition.
But before proceeding further it will be well to remind
ourselves what is meant by " explanation " in the scientific
sense. A scientific explanation may give one of two
things : either it may give an accurate quantitative
formula, e.g. Newton's law of gravitation ; or in cases of
causation the antecedent conditions. Both modes are
highly abstract, and the latter suffers from an inherent
defect : for " the true nature of the cause," as Professor
Andrew Seth x puts it, " only becomes apparent in the
effect." The antecedents in abstraction from their conse-
quents are not real antecedents at all. Cause and effect
in reality are inseparable. Taken by themselves the
antecedents do not explain the consequent ; taken
together with the fact of their combination and of their
change they are identical with the consequent : for the
continuous process involved in causation always eludes, as
we saw, intellectual expression.
§ 5. At the same time, however, that we have to admit
this ultimate difference between abstract Thought and con-
crete Things, the very possibility of science at all postulates
the intelligibility of the universe. It is a postulate which
the most elementary science has to take for granted, and
which is confirmed by each new discovery. We cannot,
or at any rate we need not, go so far as Hegel and say
that the rational is the real and the real is the rational,
but we cannot advance one step without assuming in some
sense or other the rationality of Things. Whether we
take it with Plato's Socrates as a gift of gods to men sent
1 Man's Place in the Cosmos, p. 15.
200 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
down by some Prometheus, or whether we call it with
Mill the Uniformity of Nature, or with the late Duke of
Argyll the Reign of Law, we must admit that all things
are made up of the One and the Many and have
determinateness and indeterminateness in themselves.
This again is an ultimate fact of our experience and for
it we can bring forward no reason or explanation. From
the point of view of their oneness they become intelligible
to us, and the task of all science is to discover this one-
ness, but their multiplicity or manifoldness which staggers
our intellect and is utterly beyond its grasp, is equally
an ultimate fact of experience, and as such must be
taken into account, if the system of our Thought is to be
made in any degree adequate to the system of Things.
§ 6. But these two fundamental postulates of science,
the first that Things become, the second that Things are
both one and many, evidently involve a third postulate,
quite as fundamental, if not more so — the postulate of
Things. What right have we to talk about Things at all?
It is again only our experience that gives us this right.
For us Things are a product of this experience, and in
our experience Things are only given in correlation with
Thoughts. As Kant put it, our Understanding makes
Nature, but does not create it. For purposes of science,
however, we abstract Things from our Thoughts, and for
this purpose Lotze's 1 definition of a Thing is as good as
can be arrived at. " A Thing," he says, " is the realised
individual law of its procedure." By this definition he
implies that Things — at any rate as they are given us in
perception — are both particular and changeable, change-
able, however, only according to a law which connects
the various changes, properties, or phenomena of the thing
with each other ; and that this law realised here and now
in a particular instance constitutes the Thing : for a law
"has no reality except in the case of its application." In
other words the individual thing of perception is both a
universalised particular and a particularised universal : or
as Mr. Bradley2 puts it, "the individual is both a concrete
1 Metaphysic, p. 68, Eng. trans. 2 Logic, p. 175.
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 201
particular and a concrete universal. ... So far as it is
one against other individuals, it is particular. So far as it
is the same throughout its diversity, it is universal." */
§ 7. This essay, however, is not the place for a meta-
physical discussion upon the ultimate nature of the real,
or matter, or substance. Here it is necessary merely to
point out the postulates of all scientific thinking without
attempting to justify them. We must then in some sense
take it for granted that Things exist, that Things change,
that Things are one and many, that Things are intelligible.
We must also postulate that Things are in time and
space, and are acted upon by force. In fact these
postulates are already involved in those already taken for
granted. For nothing (if psychical things be excluded)
can change except in time and in space, and except there
be some force, external or internal, to make it change.
III. Gaps in Nature and in Knowledge
8. The ideal of most men of science from the early
Atomists downwards has been to explain "the multiplicity
of things by the help of changeable relations between un-
changeable elements." Matter, it has been assumed, is
homogeneous, and the difference of its apparent qualities is
to be accounted for by the varying arrangements, or motions '
of its ultimate particles, for entia turn sunt multiplicanda
prczter necessitatem. If then we can once arrive at these
unchangeable elements, the conception of Evolution must
obviously be inapplicable to them. Men of science have
also been haunted by another ideal, expressed in the old
maxim Natures, non facit saltum, or in its more modern
form, the law of continuity. Guided by these ideals they
have been extremely unwilling to admit the existence of
any gaps in their science; and if in the existing imperfect
state of knowledge, they have been obliged to admit the
actual presence of such gaps, they have always hoped that
the advance of knowledge would tend to fill them up
entirely or reduce them to a minimum. At the present
time the most serious gaps are the gap between the
202 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
inorganic and organic worlds and the gap between life and
mind. As a consequence the existing sciences fall into
three corresponding groups — the sciences dealing with
physical phenomena, like Physics and Chemistry, the
sciences dealing with vital phenomena, like Animal and
Vegetable Physiology, and the sciences dealing with
mental phenomena, Psychology, Ethics, etc.
We must therefore ask how far the conception of
Evolution in its wider sense of " Becoming " is applicable
in these three groups taken severally.
IV. Evolution in the Inorganic Sphere
§ 9. As already mentioned, Sir Norman Lockyer sees an
exact parallel between the evolution of the inorganic, and
that of the organic world. " In the problems of inorganic
evolution," he says,1 " which we have now to face, it is
sufficiently obvious that we have to deal with a continu-
ously increasing complexity of chemical forms, precisely
as in organic evolution the biologist has tried to deal, and
has dealt successfully, with a like increase of complexity
of organic forms."
Again he speaks of the material world being " built
up of the same matter under the same laws," and he can
see no break in the order of material evolution from end
to end. The chemical elements, he believes, are not
ultimate. He quotes with approval the words of Dr.
Preston : 2 — " We are led to suspect that not only is the
atom a complex composed of an association of different
ions, but that the atoms of those substances which lie in
the same chemical group are perhaps built up from the
same kind of ions, or at least from ions which possess the
same ejmf and that the differences which exist in the
materials thus constituted arise more from the manner
of association of the ions in the atom than from differ-
ences in the fundamental character of the ions which
build up the atoms."
1 Nature, lxi. p. 131.
3 Ibid. p. 133. 3 e = electric charge ; m = mass.
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 203
§ 10. These attempts to express the differences of the
chemical elements in terms of matter and motion may
be taken as typical of all theories which attempt to
reduce qualitative differences to quantitative differences,
or to describe secondary qualities in terms of primary
qualities. The first point to notice is, that the problem
of ultimate origin or first cause is — and with reason — left
untouched. Matter and motion are taken for granted :
indeed for physical science there is no need to go behind
them. Matter, further, is assumed to be homogeneous,
and motion to manifest certain unchangeable laws, like
Newton's laws of motion, etc. Evidently therefore there
can be no evolution either of homogeneous matter as such,
nor of the unchangeable laws of motion. Evolution for
the man of science has no absolute beginning. His task is
simply to describe the process as exactly as possible from
the given state of matter and motion x to the state y
which is ex hypothesi later in the order of time. Thus, if
we take the Nebular Hypothesis of the evolution of our
planetary system, we by no means get back to the
beginning of things. Theoretically, it must be just as
possible to give a scientific description — in other words,
a determinate and exact description in terms of matter
and motion — of the assumed nebulous state as to give
a scientific description of the planetary system in its
present state. The evidence may indeed be more difficult
to collect and formulate, but it lies in pari materia.
Secondly it is remarkable that such theories all more or
less tacitly assume that the qualitative differences of the
chemical elements and other supposed composite effects
are fully explained by their quantitative differences, which,
it is hoped, may ultimately be measured according to
some unit or units of numerical relations. This surely is
a large assumption and must not be allowed to pass
unchallenged. Does it necessarily follow that — if x be
taken as their unit of measurement — because one chemical
element can be described as 2Q,r and another as 30^, all
their differences are traceable to their numerical difference,
icxr? To take an analogous instance: an organ, a
204 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
piano, and a violin may all sound the same note, which
may be numerically measured by its number of vibrations
e.g. 50 per second, yet at the same time the timbre given
to this same note by the three instruments is so different
that it can be at once detected even by the most un-
trained ear. These differences of timbre again can be
numerically measured in terms of subordinate vibrations,
and are recorded on the metallic discs of the phonograph
quite as distinctly as the different notes themselves. That
there is an essential connection between sounds and
vibrations is sufficiently obvious. But that sounds are
vibrations and that vibrations are sounds, is not so
obvious ; for they may be, for all we know, joint effects
of an unknown cause y. Sound we know as a perception
of hearing : the minute vibrations we know as a conception
abstracted from our perceptions of sight and touch. How
are we to pass from the evidence of the one sense to the
evidence of the other ?
§11. To return to the chemical elements, there is
similarly no evidence to show that the differences of the
chemical elements from each other are exhausted by such
differences as they possess, which are capable of being
expressed in terms of matter and motion. To apply the
analogy just adduced, is it not quite conceivable that two
different chemical elements might be describable in
identical numerical terms of matter and motion and yet
possess such a different timbre, so to speak, that their real
difference could not be denied ? Such hypotheses can
only be taken to give any hope of an ultimate explanation
of Things on the assumption — surely a very large one —
that there is nothing real in the universe except matter,
motion, and their laws of action and interaction. Similarly
in the sphere of colour : blue may be described as light of
wave length x and red as light of wave length y : the
primary qualities, that is to say, manifested by these two
colours, may be perfectly numerable or measurable. None
the less, red is still red and blue is still blue. It is an
attempt to account for a complex whole by its most
measurable part or aspect, while all the time the relation
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 205
between the part and the whole remains quite un-
intelligible. It is like saying that, because this man is
just and has two legs, the two legs are the cause of his
justice. In a word these theories one and all imply or
are apt to imply that the primary qualities alone are real,
in Locke's words, "do really exist in the bodies them-
selves," " are in the things themselves, whether they are
perceived or no ; and upon their different modifications it
is that the secondary qualities depend." Berkeley and
Hume demonstrated the fallacy of this position long ago
and no one has ventured since seriously to impugn their
arguments. As Mr. Bradley has clearly put it,1 " the line
of reasoning, which showed that secondary qualities are
not real, has equal force as applied to primary. The
extended comes to us only by relation to an organ [of
sense] ; and, whether the organ is touch or is sight or
muscle-feeling — or whatever else it may be — makes no
difference to the argument. For, in any case, the thing
is perceived by us through an affection of our body, and
never without that." And again, " without secondary
quality extension [which is involved in all the so-called
primary qualities] is not conceivable." It is needless here
to reproduce the various arguments at length. Bacon
complained of the old Scholastic Logic as being subtilitati
natures longe impar. Surely some of our scientists of to-
day are victims of the same mistake : they accept as
ultimate facts the immutability of matter, the conservation
of energy, the transmutation of force, the development of
the various sense organs from a primary sense of touch or
a muscular sense, and taking any concrete thing, they
strip off all its secondary qualities as in themselves of
no importance, being only manifestations or modifications
of its primary qualities ; then they take its primary
qualities and describe them in terms of some assumed
units of measurement. This done, they expect us to
believe that even if they have not explained the nature of
the real thing as it is in itself, yet they have given us the
whole of its phenomenal nature, and that nothing more
1 Appearance and Reality, p. 14.
2o6 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
need or can be known about it. It may of course very-
well be that the relation of the primary to the secondary
qualities involves an insoluble problem : the important
point is that it is a problem and must not be passed over
in such phrases as — " all chemical atoms have a common
basis, and build new mental images on this basis"1 —
phrases which imply that matter and motion alone are real,
all other qualities being more or less mental illusions.
So far then we have arrived at this result. Natural
science for its purposes takes account only of the
numerable or measurable qualities of things, and in dealing
with secondary qualities, like colour, sound, and taste,
regards them as results of their primary qualities, without,
however, explaining their causal connection ; and is also
very apt to speak of them, as Locke did, as " the certain
bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the
bodies themselves."
§ 12. Two further points in the above analysis here
call for notice : the first is the predominance of the mental
factor in the primary qualities and their estimation or
description in various units of measurement ; the second
is the limitation which this abstract view of things imposes
upon the problem of Evolution.
To begin with the first point. Before any thing, e.g.
the motion of a billiard ball, can be made the subject
of scientific investigation at all, it must undergo a large
amount of mental preparation. It cannot with any hope
of success be treated in its concrete entirety. It must
be taken as an instance of the operation of a universal
law or laws. We must neglect as irrelevant to our
purpose many of the particular circumstances that
surround its motion, like, e.g. its colour, its material, the
colour of the cloth on which it rolls, the time of day,
the place, the person who rolls it, etc. etc. All these
circumstances taken together make up the concrete
individual phenomenon, but for our purpose we abstract
them, until we have left one or more aspects of the
phenomenon only, sufficiently simple for our science of
1 Lockyer, Nature, lxi. p. 297.
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 207
mechanics to be able to cope with. In other words,
having thus arrived at the mechanical aspect of the
problem, the science is able to give a mechanical
explanation of it : but the power to arrive at this
aspect, is entirely due to the mind's power of abstraction.
This is no mere reassertion of the epistemological truth
that the unit of knowledge is subject plus object — the
interrelation of the knowing mind and the object known
— so that we can never arrive either at subjects per se
or at objects per se. The point for emphasis is that the
objects of all mechanical sciences are not the things of
common experience as such at all, but only one particular
aspect of them, namely, their primary qualities, and that
this aspect, like all other particular aspects, is arrived at
by mental abstraction. Equally true is it that the
mechanical explanation or description of these primary
qualities, when it is given, is just as much a mental
product. Though it deals with matter and motion, it is
expressed in terms of law, number, or measure.
Historically, the conception of a Law of Nature is of
course anthropomorphic. But natural science uses the
term not in its juridical sense, but in the sense of a
uniformity of sequences or coexistences. To arrive at
such uniformities, however, we have to compare instances
together, and to abstract from their individual character-
istics the identical process in them to which, having thus
abstracted it, we give the name of law. The law we
arrive at is the result of this abstraction and without it
is impossible. The applicability of such conceptions to
the multiplicity of phenomena is one of the best evidences
of the rationality of things. All Nature is akin, as Pindar
sang, and there is as much Mind in Things as there is
in ourselves. Similarly, when we use measures or
numbers in our mechanical descriptions, not only are we
obliged to take some arbitrary standard like a mile or a
minute for our unit, but the very processes of numbering
or of measuring are abstract mental creations. So true
is it that even in the inorganic kingdom it is rather mind
that explains matter than matter that explains mind.
2o8 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
§ I 3. To come now to our second point, the limitation
imposed by natural science on the problem of Evolution.
" We now know," we are told,1 " that heat, sound, light,
chemical action, electricity, and magnetism are all modes
of motion " ; 2 the different physical forces may be
converted from one form into another : heat may be
changed into molar movement or movement of mass ;
this in turn into light or sound, and then into electricity,
and so forth. Accurate measurement of the quantity of
force which is used in this metamorphosis has shown that
it is " constant " or " unchanged." That is to say, the
Evolutionist has for his problem in the inorganic kingdom
— from the mechanical point of view — to show, describe,
enumerate, or measure the various motions whereby the
different atoms, ions, or particles of homogeneous matter
assume the configurations or arrangements that constitute
in the first instance the various chemical elements ; then
how these elements under these same unchangeable laws
of motion get into a nebulous state ; again how under the
same laws the nebulae pass into more shapely planetary or
other systems ; and finally how in each planet or at any
rate some of the planets, oceans, and continents, mountains
and plains, lakes and rivers, are formed by the same
agencies. Matter and motion, motion and matter — and
their quantitative relations, are to mechanical science the
real essences of all things. This, then, is the problem of
Evolution for mechanical science : given as permanencies,
homogeneous matter and certain unchangeable laws of
motion, which ex hypothesi are liable to no evolution — to
trace the motions whereby the ultimate particles assume
different positions or configurations at different times
and places. When the mechanical Evolutionist has
solved this problem, he has achieved his task — a task in
itself legitimate, noble and useful, but not exhaustive.
For Nature to the mechanical Evolutionist is an abstrac-
tion, a Nature of primary qualities, not Nature in
her concrete reality. In reality Nature is not thus
1 Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe, p. 235, Eng. trans.
2 Ibid. p. 217.
IV
THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 209
separated from her secondary qualities nor from her
relations to mind. Nature has indeed to be studied in
parts and in aspects, because citius emergit Veritas ex
errore quant ex confusione. But Nature herself is a whole,
and the parts are only what they are by their relations to
this whole. The parts, the aspects, the qualities, the
relations which we have thus deliberately abstracted, must
be scientifically described and restored to their proper
places again, if our knowledge about Nature is ever to be
at all adequate to Nature herself. " For we know in
part : . . . but when that which is perfect is come, that
which is in part shall be done away."
§14. Before leaving this subject we may note that
some scientists in treating of inorganic evolution use the
Darwinian term " Natural Selection " to describe what they
consider to be the most important of the causal agencies
at work. A word must be said later on * as to the anthro-
pomorphic metaphor involved in the term. Their meaning
obviously is that among all possible alternatives the present
state of the universe is due to blind chance. " Since
impartial study of the evolution of the world," 2 as Haeckel
puts it, " teaches us that there is no definite aim and no
special purpose to be traced in it, there seems to be no
alternative but to leave everything to blind chance. . . .
Neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in
that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a
controlling purpose — all is the result of chance." This
may indeed be admitted if " chance " be taken in its
strictly scientific sense, as equivalent to " a cause or causes
unknown to human calculation " ; and it is in this sense
that Haeckel himself takes it, for he adds : " This,
however, does not prevent us from recognising in each
' chance ' event, as we do in the evolution of the entire
cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law,
the law of substance." In other words, if there be taken
for granted, as necessary presuppositions, particles of
homogeneous matter and all the known laws of Nature,
then we may say that the present state of the cosmos is
' Infr. § 19. 2 Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe, p. 218, Eng. trans.
P
2io G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
due to the action upon these particles of all the known
laws of Nature plus chance, where " chance " means other
uniform causes that are unknown. Surely this is a mere
truism, which properly interpreted serves only to emphasise
once more the supremacy of Mind. For all known laws of
Nature are ipso facto intelligible and general formulae; there-
fore by analogy we have every reason to suspect that the
unknown laws of Nature, could they be discovered, would
also be intelligible formulae, and therefore in like manner
sure evidence of intelligible and intelligent agency — in a
word of Mind. If, however the emphasis be laid on the
adjective " blind " and the cosmos be consequently taken
as a purely " fortuitous concourse of atoms," not only is
this utterly against all scientific evidence ; but the chances
of there being any " cosmos " at all are mathematically nil
— one against infinity. This amounts to the denial of
any intelligible order or rationality in things, and without
some such rationality science can have no object. In a
word there can be no science.
V. Evolution in the Organic Sphere
| 15. When we pass from inorganic to organic evolu-
tion, we cross the unbridgeable gap recognised by all men
of science. Thus Sir John Burdon-Sanderson, speaking in
1893,1 tells us: "The origin of life, the first transition
from non-living to living, is a riddle, which lies outside
our scope." In other words life must be taken as an
ultimate fact of experience. But life is unknown to us
apart from living organisms, and a living body may be
defined in the words of Sir Michael Foster2 as "a machine
doing work in accordance with certain laws " : and " we
may seek," he goes on to say, " to trace out the working
of the inner wheels, how these raise up the lifeless dust
into living matter, and let the living matter fall away
again into dust, giving rise to movement and heat. Or
we may look upon the individual life as a link in a long
chain, joining something which went before to something
1 British Association Address, 1893. 2 British Association Address, 1S99.
,v THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 211
about to come, a chain whose beginning lies hid in the
farthest past, and may seek to know the ties which bind
one life to another. Of the problems presented by the
living body viewed as a machine, some may be spoken of
as mechanical, others as physical, and yet others as
chemical, while some are, apparently at least, none of
these." Here again we see the powers and uses of
mental abstraction : organisms are conceived as bundles
of qualities, presenting various aspects. For scientific
purposes these aspects can be detached from the whole
and treated separately : thus organisms are, from one
point of view, matter in motion, and as such present
problems for mechanical and physical solution : from
another point of view, animal heat, digestion, etc., involve
chemical changes and are fit subjects for chemistry ; for
living bodies possess secondary as well as primary qualities.
At this point many scientists have stopped under the
notion, we are told,1 that, " however complicated may be
the conditions under which vital energies manifest them-
selves, they can be split into processes which are identical
in nature with those of the non-living world, and, as a
corollary to this, that the analysing of a vital process into
its physical and chemical constituents, so as to bring these
constituents into measurable relation with physical or
chemical standards, is the only mode of investigating them
which can lead to satisfactory results. . . . The methods
of investigation being physical or chemical, the organism
itself naturally came to be considered as a complex of
such processes, and nothing more. And in particular the
idea of adaptation, which is not a consequence of organism,
but its essence, was in great measure lost sight of." Here
then we have a distinguished physiologist reiterating the
old complaint of Bacon already quoted that the method
used is subtilitati nature? longe impar — that ' adaptation,'
the ultimate essence of organism is lost sight of.
§ 1 6. What, however, does the professor mean by
' adaptation ' ? " Action," he tells 2 us, " is of its essence.
. . . The activities of an organism are naturally distin-
1 Burdon-Sanderson, British Association Address, 1893. - Ibid.
212 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
guishable into two kinds, according as we consider the
action of the whole organism in its relation to the external
world or to other organisms, or the action of the parts or
organs in their relation to each other. . . . Organised
nature as it now presents itself to us has become what
it is by a process of gradual perfecting or advancement,
brought about by the elimination of those organisms
which failed to obey the fundamental principle of adap-
tation. Each step therefore in this evolution is a
reaction to external influences, the motive of which is
essentially the same as that by which from moment
to moment the organism governs itself. And the whole
process is a necessary outcome of the fact that those
organisms are most prosperous which look best after their
own welfare." From these passages two points clearly
emerge : the first is that in the opinion of the professor
the strictly biological attributes of organisms can never
find their ultimate explanation in mechanical and chemical
processes ; the second, that adaptation is the most essential
characteristic of living organisms, and that this adaptation
is the result of the interest of the individual which is " the
sole motive by which every energy [or activity] is guided."
In other words the teleological factor is, according to the
professor, the most important, and the teleological aspect
of organisms has little or nothing to do with their
mechanical or chemical aspects. It is impossible without
them, but is inexplicable by them.
§ 17. Again, an organism is meaningless without its
environment — without its relations to other organisms and
to lifeless things. The problem of evolution is therefore to
trace the process of adaptation between the organism and
its environment. This problem is strictly biological — not
physical or chemical — -and cannot therefore be reduced to
terms of number or measurement : any explanation1
therefore that can be given must take the form of a
statement, as accurate as possible, of the antecedent
conditions of the organism under investigation. Rut how
is this to be done ? Logically the mode of procedure is
1 Cf. sup. § 4.
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 213
precisely the same as in the inorganic sciences. All the
postulates necessary in the latter have to be taken for
granted and a few more, like that of life and adaptation,
have to be added to them ; and in addition to the physical
and mechanical laws of the inorganic sciences the biologist
has to assume the working of certain biological laws,
arrived at by mental abstraction from the observation of
the actual processes in living organisms. Under these
limitations the evolution of species is scientifically ex-
plicable. In other words, though science can never tell
us why nor even how one species changes into another
species ; yet it can, or at any rate hopes to, describe
accurately the antecedent conditions of any given stage
in the process. Thus to explain a consequent species it
must show that the antecedent species was transformed
into it in accordance with the observed laws of Heredity,
Variation, Natural Selection, etc. This is the way in
which Darwin conceived the problem. " It is interest-
ing," he writes at the end of his Origin of Species, " to
reflect that these elaborately constructed forms [i.e. of
plant and animal life], so different from each other, and
dependent on each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us.
These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with
Reproduction ; Inheritance which is almost implied by
reproduction : Variability from the indirect and direct
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse :
a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for
Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing
Divergence of Character and the extinction of less-
improved forms. . . . There is grandeur in this view of
life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one ;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according
to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been, and are being evolved." In other words, if we
take for granted or as ultimate facts of experience the
laws of Growth with Reproduction, of Inheritance, and
2 14 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
of Variability, resulting in Natural Selection, then it is
possible to trace the evolution of species from the past
stage x, through the stages abed ... to the present
stage y. For science it is a process without beginning
and without end ; we never get to the origin of species :
we have to assume as ultimate principles Growth,
Inheritance, and Variability, with their consequence
Natural Selection — the most essential attributes of all
organisms — and with these laws to help us, we can in
some measure describe how "endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."
These laws are assumed to be permanent, and as such
not liable to evolution, and yet at the same time they
are attributes or processes in the organisms which exhibit
them, and which are evolved according to them. Once
more we find ourselves face to face with the old world
problem — the reconciliation of the Permanent Unity of
Parmenides with the Perpetual Flux of Heraclitus.
§ 1 8. 'Adaptation,' however — the teleological factor —
we have been told, is the essence of organism. The
consideration of this dictum and its implications will
lead us to a path which is, philosophically, much more
hopeful. Does ' Adaptation,' we may ask, necessarily
imply ' design ' or ' purpose,' whether conscious or
unconscious ? Many, perhaps most, scientists, have
abandoned the old meaning of conscious purpose — and
for the very good reason that they can get on very well
without it. For science, as such, cannot know agencies,
but only the products of agencies : just as e.g. psychology
cannot know faculties, but only the products of faculties.
But it follows by no means that what we cannot know
in the sense of forming an idea or image of it, cannot
exist. In the strict sense of the term, we can know an
animal in its earlier state a and in its later state b. But
as Professor Burdon- Sanderson puts it, "to assert that
the link between a and b is mechanical, for no better
reason than that b always follows a, is an error of
statement, which is apt to lead the incautious reader or
hearer to imagine that the relation between a and b is
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 215
understood, when in fact its nature may be wholly-
unknown." Until Biology can give antecedents for
Adaptation, Heredity, and Variability, it has to take
them as ultimate facts or principles, and to work with
them as such : it does not and need not concern itself
with the further question of the Critical Philosophy — how
are they possible? This further question is the business
of the philosopher, when he is dealing with ultimate
biological problems, just as in Mechanics he has to
discuss the presuppositions of matter, motion, and force ;
and, if in this sphere he can frame his answer on the
same lines as his answer to the ultimate mechanical
problems, he approaches nearer to the Monistic ideal
which is the goal of each science in its separate sphere
as well as of philosophy as a whole. ' Adaptation ' then
is the essence of organic life, and adaptation necessarily
implies the adaptation of means to ends. But whence
is this conception derived ? There can, of course, be
only one answer : from our own conscious adaptation
of means to ends in practical matters. So much every
biologist will admit : but most will maintain that the
use of the term in respect of organic growths is a mere
metaphor, and that we cannot draw any inference from
the suitability of the metaphor to the operation of any
conscious purpose or design in organic structures.
Scientifically they are perfectly right, because there is
not and from the nature of things cannot be any
evidence of consciousness, such as we know it in ourselves,
as present in vegetables or in animals, whether low or
high in the scale, outside the human animal : to science
adaptation is a law — expressed ipso facto in rational
terms — under which a great multiplicity of particular
phenomena may be brought. What lies behind it,
biology does not know, because there is no biological
evidence.
§ 19. But the philosopher, remembering how in the
mechanical and chemical sciences the rational conceptions
of law, number, and figure alone brought order into the
chaos of the manifold, will see in biological adaptation no
216 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
mere metaphor, but, reasoning by analogy, will see
positive evidence of rational agency. Just as he saw the
physicist and chemist compelled to interpret the relations
of matter, motion, and force in terms of reason, and
inferred that our minds were able thus to interpret
inorganic Nature because somehow there was a like mind
in her, so here again he sees the biologist unable to
advance a step without the rational conception of
' adaptation,' and in the same way argues that such
interpretation can only be successful on the hypothesis
that somehow there is in organic Nature a reason
similar to our own, which adapts her means to her ends.
" If man can by patience," writes Darwin,1 " select
variations useful to him, why, under changing and
complex conditions of life, should not variations useful to
Nature's living products often arise, and be preserved or
selected ? What limit can be put to this power, acting
during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole
constitution, structure, and habits of each creature —
favouring the good and rejecting the bad." Over and
over again Darwin thus personifies Nature and he does so
because he cannot help it — neither is there any reason
why he ought to help it. For our own conscious mind is
the only key we possess to unlock the secrets of Nature,
and if this key will not fit, we have no other. In a word,
the evolutionist in the organic kingdom, proceeds in
precisely the same way as the evolutionist in the
inorganic kingdom. Like him he starts with matter,
motion, and force, and chemical change : in addition he
assumes as ultimate facts or principles life and the laws of
life, adaptation, reproduction, variation, etc. He makes
no attempt to give any evolutional genesis of these first
principles ; to him they are permanent causes : and then
having assumed all this, he describes with as scientific
accuracy as possible how the organism x changes into the
organism y through the intermediate stages abed . . .
And his description is successful and convincing, but only
under these limitations.
1 Origin of Species, new edition, 1900, p. 643.
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 217
VI. Evolution in the Sphere of Consciousness
§ 20. But little space is left for the consideration of
the Mental and Moral Sciences, which come next in order ;
but the limitations under which the evolutionist proceeds
in this sphere are so very similar that so long an
exposition is hardly necessary. In the Mental sciences it
makes little difference from the point of view of this essay
whether the evolutionist be a psycho-physicist or a pure
psychologist. If he be the former, he will start with the
principles of biology and attempt to give a history of the
successive nerve -states and brain -states in the lower
animals and in man which precede and which follow the
facts of feeling and of consciousness. But just as life was
an ultimate fact and insoluble problem to the biologist, so
here feeling and consciousness are ultimate facts and
insoluble problems to the psycho-physicist. " There is a
gulf," says Dr. Stout,1 " fixed between the physical and
the psychical, of such a nature that it is impossible coinci-
dently to observe an event of the one kind and an event
of the other kind, so as to apprehend the relation between
them. . . . No analysis can discover in the psychological
fact any traces of its supposed physical factors." If on
the other hand the evolutionist be a pure psychologist, he
will start with consciousness as an ultimate fact, he will
try to discover the general laws of mind and mental
processes and then he will attempt to describe " in
succession the various stages in the development of the
individual mind, passing from the more simple and
primitive to the more developed and complex." 2
Logically the task before the mental evolutionist is the
same as that before the biological evolutionist. He must
start with the ultimate fact of conscious mind : he must
discover the permanent laws of mental processes — of their
variation, reproduction, and heredity, and then he will be
able with some accuracy to describe the successive stages
in mental evolution ; but here, just as much as in the
changes of the inorganic sphere, and as in the vital process
1 Analytic Psychology, vol. i. p. 4. a Ibid. p. 36.
218 G. E. UNDERHILL iv
of the organic sphere, the actual processes involved will
ipso facto elude his understanding. Mental products and
the laws and stages of their production — these constitute
his science. The real process is beyond him — the process
as it actually goes on in fact.
VII. Results of the Inquiry
S 21. Our inquiry need not be further pressed: three
points at least should now be plain. The first is that the
evolutionist can never deal with origins. Wherever he
begins his analysis — be it in the inorganic, organic, or
mental sphere— he must start with some fact of experience
and assume it as ultimate — at any rate for his particular
purpose. The second is that all evolutionists alike
assume the discovered laws of development to be
permanent and unchanging, and but few stop to ask,
whence comes this permanence and absence of change ? it
is a real question and raises a real difficulty. For from
another point of view these laws are themselves qualities
of the very things, whose evolution it is the object of
science to trace. Gravity is just as much a quality as a
law of masses ; reproductive power is just as much a
quality as a law of animals ; association of ideas is just
as much a quality as a law of mind. What then, we ask
in vain, is the differentia whereby such permanent
qualities are to be distinguished from qualities more
fleeting. Why should there be supposed to be an
evolution of chemical elements, but no evolution of
gravity ?
Thirdly and lastly in all scientific discoveries of what-
soever kind the human mind discovers itself and its own
intelligible relations ; the laws of motion, the law of
gravitation, the orbits of the planets, the atomic weight of
the chemical elements — so far as they are intelligible to
us at all — are intelligible because the mind can number
and measure and finds its own numbers and measures in
them. The adaptation of organisms — that adaptation
which constitutes their very essence — is intelligible because
iv THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION 219
our mind knows what it means by adapting means to
ends. Still more obvious is it that in the Mental Sciences
our own mind is our only key to the facts and laws of
other minds. Tavrov vovs icai voijtov.
§22. The doctrine of Evolution then is a doctrine
of limited and not of universal application. It has been
most successfully applied in the sphere from whence it
came — the organic kingdom. In its wider sense —
perhaps only distinguishable from mere change or be-
coming by implying some increase in complexity of form
— it is bearing good fruit as a working hypothesis in the
inorganic kingdom. When applied to the development
of conscious and social phenomena, it is very hard to
distinguish Evolution from what our forefathers called
history. But in whatever sphere it is applied, its limita-
tions are equally apparent. It must have a matter of
some sort in which to manifest itself and its manifestations
are conceived, whether rightly or wrongly, to take place
according to certain laws. And by all evolutionists
alike, this matter, whether materially or ideally interpreted,
and these laws are conceived of as permanent and
unchanging — i.e. as not themselves subject to Evolution.
In a word, the One and the Many, the Permanent and the
Changeable, involve problems just as insoluble to us as
they were to Parmenides and Plato, and we have not
evolved (nor indeed are we likely to evolve) any new
mental processes whereby to solve them. Human science
conquers new kingdoms, but she conquers them with her
old weapons — mental reconstruction of sensible experience
according to mental principles. Darwin's discovery of
the variability of species is no exception to the rule.
The mental principle which he used is that which
Aristotle formulated as final cause — nothing more or less :
what he did was to prove that it held good in a sphere
and in a way in which no one hitherto had thought of
applying it. This old conception, thus newly applied,
has indeed been disguised under the strange but now
familiar names of Evolution, Adaptation, Natural Selection
— probably for no other reason than Bacon's old con-
20 G. E. UNDERHILL
IV
demnation of the misuse of final causes in physical
sciences — causa finalis tantum abest ut prosit, ut etiam
scientias corrumpai. In the minds of Bacon's opponents
final cause was a notio male terminata. In Darwin's
mind it became a notio bene terminata through his careful
observations and experiments. Numberless passages in
the Origin of Species might be cited ; thus referring
to Natural Selection and his favourite canon Natura non
facit saitum, he writes,1 " [Hence] we can see why through-
out nature the same general end is gained by an almost
infinite diversity of means, for every peculiarity when
once acquired is long inherited, and structures already
modified in many ways have to be adapted for the same
general purpose." Long ago Aristotle 2 on a slender
basis of facts asserted etrriv apa to eveicd rov iv Tot? <pvo~ec
jivofjLevot<i ical ovaiv. Two thousand years later Darwin
proved the assertion by marshalling the facts.
1 P. 646. 2 Phys. ii. 8. 6.
ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS
By R. R. Marett
I. Enunciation of Problem
i. The vital problem of modern Ethics is how to reconcile the standpoint
of Origin and Validity.
2. Meaning of these terms defined and illustrated.
3. The problem one of General Philosophy since (a) it pertains not only
to Ethics but e.g. to Religion and Art ; (d) it involves the difficulty
about the relation of the conscious to the non-conscious (instinct).
II. Determination of Metaphysical Attitude
4. What is to be our attitude towards our subject taken simply as matter
of experience? Metaphysics, the (would-be) theory of experience as a
whole, must be experimental, if ' experience is experiment ' ; which
doctrine of the psychologist, however, calls itself for metaphysical
endorsement.
5. In ' presentness of experience ' the psychologist provides the metaphysician
with a standard of reality, whereby he may judge all discursive thinking
to be experimental merely.
6. And metaphysical thinking forms no exception to this rule, its special
danger being that it exceed the limits of valid experimentation, there
being a kind of barely logical conjecture which leads to nothing.
7. Our policy will be to try to avoid this kind of thinking ('metalogic '),
and to face the ' facts ' of Empirical Psychology.
III. Delimitation of Sphere of Ethics
8. Another preliminary task is to define the scope of Ethics — a subject
on which the vaguest views prevail. A treble limitation must suffice
us here.
9. (a) Life is not all conscious life, and Ethics has no concern with instinct
as such.
10. (b) Conscious life is not all morality, and the aspect with which Ethics
deals presents a certain 'reference' and 'quality' in combination, either
of which so far as it is found apart from the other does not come within
the range of Ethics proper.
11. (<:) Morality as a product is but partially due to moral theory, whether
as science or as art, since, besides instinct and quasi -instinctive
221
222 R. R. MARETT v
impulse, there is constitutional feeling to be reckoned with before bare
idea can pass into achievement.
IV. Ground-plan of Proposed Synthesis
12. A first glance at the facts offers hope of reconciling Origin and Validity.
Our appreciations of right and wrong manifestly involve some acquaint-
ance with Origin in the sense of the history, or previous record, of the
virtues.
13. Such extreme views as (a) that the only Origin worth considering is
' ultimate origin,' and (b) that Validity resides in ' things-as-they-are,'
are due to metaphysical prejudice which will not stand criticism.
14. Hence (a) proposed synthesis — an intuitionism tempered by historical
criticism ; (b) proposed method — to confute the irreconcilables on either
side.
V. Mere Origin as an Ethical Standpoint
15. The evolutionary school has no right to base its 'rational utilitarianism'
on the fact of the ' unconscious utilitarianism ' of physiological nature.
The latter represents a mere 'is,' whereas the moralist has to explain
and justify an ' ought.'
16. This is, however, not the transcendental 'ought' of the apriorist, but a
psychological ' ought,' within which the empiricist has to recognise
diverse moments that ' seem ' to imply determination from without and
determination from within as occurring at once and together.
17. Certain evolutionists indeed, by formally distinguishing between the
psychological effects of ' natural ' and ' conscious ' selection, admit the
bare fact of this duality in unity. It remains to follow up the idea into
the concrete.
18. For instance, let us consider the phenomena of man's history as a domestic
being.
19. These, though they agree in being psychical phenomena, display a
duality of intrinsic character which, by a working hypothesis, we will
ascribe to a divergence between the ' aims ' of natural and conscious
selection.
20. It may, however, be contended from the side of Origin that these specific
facts on the whole testify to the predominance of the instinctive
moment in the moral consciousness.
21. But now consider the closely-related history of the idea of Purity. Here
we seem to have a moral principle that has severed its connection with
instinct and persists by reason of a validity of its own. To call it a
' by-product,' with the evolutionist, is simply to confess it inexplicable
from that point of view.
22. In the absence, then, of any explanation from the side of Origin, the
balance of empirical probability is in favour of the spontaneous
origination of this ideal by the moral consciousness.
23. A glance at the general history of the virtues (as classified in five
' natural ' groups) confirms the view that the duality in question runs
right through morality as a product.
24. The domestic virtues appear on the whole to subserve the ' natural ' end of
race-preservation.
25. And this is also true of the 7iational virtues.
26. On the other hand, the personal virtues seem rather to make for a
'spiritual ' end, namely self-perfection.
27. As is even more palpably the case with the transcendental virtues.
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 223
28. Whilst the international virtues show the two moments at work together.
29. The appearances, then, are not unambiguous, much less do they un-
ambiguously favour a metaphysical naturalism, the ethical implications
of which can easily be proved to be a tissue of inconsistencies.
30. On the other hand, suppose the votary of Origin eschew the naturalistic
metaphysic, and concede a provisional validity to ' spiritual ' as distin-
guished from ' natural ' motive en the ground that the one no less than
the other is a persistent feature of historical morality, will he not
proceed from history to introspection in search of a moral ' ought '
that is relatively unambiguous and one ?
VI. Validity as an Ethical Standpoint
31. Introspection, regarded as a branch of Empirical Psychology complemen-
tary in scope to the historical or comparative branch, shows us that
there is immanent in the consciousness of the typical moral subject of
to-day a finally decisive power of selective valuation amongst moral
principles.
32. Further, introspection can to some extent explain why the moral will is
ultimately governed by this kind of 'intuition,' namely, because (a)
discursive thinking, as contrasted with feeling, to which intuition is
more nearly akin, involves distraction of attention and consequent
enervation of will ; (b) discursive thinking about futurities, as distin-
guished from abstract immediacies, is enervating even as regards the
will to think ; (c) discursive thinking about feelings is apt to do per-
manent injury to the power of feeling, and hence to that of willing with
confidence.
33. Now the authoritativeness of moral intuition, to judge by its psycho-
logical appearance, is not the mere ' fatality ' of instinct.
34. Nor is it the external compulsiveness of custom and law.
35. On the contrary it is essentially internal, i.e. self-imposed ; and rational,
i.e. capable of furnishing the supreme organising principle of a norma-
tive Ethics that is at once preceptive and explanatory.
36. As to the finality of such a form for Ethics from the point of view of
General Philosophy and of Metaphysics, it would seem that normative-
ness is common to the human sciences, and that there is at any rate
much to be said in favour of a Ideological interpretation of the universe.
VII. Suggestions for a Combined Use of the Two
Standpoints in Empirical Ethics
37. An ultimate authoritativeness in Ethics being, on the various grounds
alleged, allowed to Validity, what scope can be found for Origin as a
supplementary principle ? Now so far as Origin means naturalism, its
services can be dispensed with altogether.
38. But if Origin stand for the comparative study of the relations of the
'objective,' i.e. external, factor to the 'subjective,' i.e. internal and
self-authorising, factor in moral process, it has an important function
to fulfil.
39. Whilst Validity is from first to last the affirmative principle in Ethics,
Origin is the critical. The ' laws ' that they conjointly establish are
ultimately self-imposed ordinances, rather than observed uniformities,
simply because of the ' fact ' that moral practicability, whether as
sought or as studied, depends in the last resort on ourselves rather than
on circumstances.
40. Thus the form most fitting for Ethics as a whole would seem to be that
of a critical intuitionism. Solvitur — aut dissolvitur — ixperiendo !
224 R. R. MARETT
I. Enunciation of Problem
§ i. A SYNTHESIS of the methodological principles of
Ethics would prove very welcome to the philosopher. For,
regarded philosophically, Ethics is in a bad way. Hostile
camps divide the land. Now two courses are open to the
peace-maker. He may break up the disputed territory into
lots. Man's interest in himself as a moral being may con-
ceivably have to content itself in the future with a chapter
in psychology or anthropology here, a scrap-book of pensees
there. Or the peace-maker may induce the contending
parties to compose their differences. And this, we may
be sure, when practicable, is the simpler and more grateful
task. At all events, it is along these lines that one's
natural prejudice bids one seek for a solution.
Meanwhile it is all in favour of a settlement being shortly
reached by the one way or by the other, that the matter
and cause of the dispute are tolerably manifest. If Ethics
splits into fragments, it will split on the question of Origin
versus Validity. Or, on the other hand, if Ethics is to
maintain its integrity as Ethics, Origin and Validity must
be reconciled, that is, room must be found for both prin-
ciples of explanation to operate freely within a single,
well-marked, centrally-governed, self-supporting province
of thought.
§ 2. These principlesare doubtless of such familiar import
as scarcely to stand in need of preliminary definition.
Origin, taken in an ethical connection, represents the
standpoint from which moral judgments — that is,
appreciations of the morally good and bad as applied
witn regulative intent to human character and conduct —
are explained by reference to the previous stages of a
historical development imputed to them. Validity is the
standpoint from which such judgments are explained by
reference to their present worth and significance to the
moral subject — to the person or persons uttering them.
A few miscellaneous examples taken from various
text-books, ethical and otherwise (the authors of which
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 225
may go bail for the facts alleged), will serve to illustrate
the general bearing and force of the antithesis : —
We wear clothes to-day from a sense of decency.
Originally they furnished our ancestors with a means of
sexual attraction.
For us monogamy rests on a theory of the rights of
woman. Originally the form of marriage was the
immediate outcome of the numerical proportions of the
sexes within a given ' area of characterisation.'
This man admires his own class for its intrinsic
superiority to the vulgar in point of manners. The
origin of his prejudice is to be sought in the racial scorn
of a conquering people for its serfs.
That man holds by fasting as conducive to moral
self-discipline. In its origin fasting was a means of
producing ' ecstatic vision.'
I play golf as a relaxation. Play originally constituted
man's apprenticeship in the serious arts of life.
We burn Guy Fawkes for fun. Once the act had
political significance. In the background, perhaps, there
lurks a rite designed to reinvigorate a corn-spirit.
I think it morally abominable to commit homicide ;
bad taste to speak evil of the dead ; disrespectful to
approach my sovereign too closely ; dirty to allow
another to eat off my unwashed plate. Once these
practices were shunned from fear of ghosts or of
magical infection.
Now, presuming (as I do on the strength of its past
and present tendency) that Ethics cannot afford to ignore
either of these standpoints in favour of the other, is
there any way, I ask myself, whether through subordi-
nation or through co-ordination, of reducing them to a
single standpoint — of freeing the ethical ' because ' of
that fundamental ambiguity which threatens the very
existence of Ethics as a working system of explanatory
principles ? That, in outline, is the problem to be
attacked.
§ 3. By way of opening the campaign, let us take the
auguries. The foregoing illustrations suggest two
Q
226 R. R. MARETT v
observations which may serve to convey a hint of the
kind of affair before us.
(a) The first is that the difficulty about choosing
between the standards of Origin and Validity is not con-
fined to Ethics, regarded as one amongst several ' organised
interests ' of the human spirit. Thus some of our cases
seemed to relate primarily to the history of Religion ;
others again to that of Art on its recreative side. Hence
we must be prepared to have to cast about somewhat
widely for a mediating view. Our object must be to
provide a form for our theory of the moral life that will
likewise be applicable to our theory of the ' higher life ' as
a whole.
(b) The second is that, of the various ' origins '
alleged, some are palpably more original than others.
Sometimes, as when I forget Guy Fawkes the Popish
plotter in Guy Fawkes the occasion of fireworks, one
conscious motive has but retired in favour of another.
Sometimes a motive will have altered mainly in respect to
the degree of clearness with which the subject grasps it.
Thus my prejudice against the serf-class — against ' colour,'
let us say — may all along have rested on dimly rational
grounds. Sometimes, however, a more radical form of
change would appear to have occurred. The motive of
shame that bids me cover my nakedness may be contrasted,
not with another motive bidding me ingratiate myself
with the other sex, which motive may or may not have a
certain weight with me still, but with an instinct or
organic trend, implanted in my body by natural selection
in such a way as to bring about the result contemplated
by the last-mentioned motive independently of any act of
will on my part. Now this, the most original of so-called
origins, will presumably constitute the real point d'app?n
of the more uncompromising champion of the historical
method of explanation. His Origin par excellence will be
' instinct.' Thus there looms ahead the problem of how
to correlate the ' spiritual ' and subjective with the
purely ' natural ' and external. It looks as if the
combatants must be brought to parley ' from opposite
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 227
sides of the ditch.' Here, then, is further reason to
suppose that the argument is bound to transcend the
strictly ethical plane ; that, in fact, however specific be
the application it is intended to give to its conclusions,
these cannot be established without the aid of — let us call
it, General Philosophy.
II. Determination of Metaphysical Attitude1
S 4. General Philosophy, however, hardly amounts to
Metaphysics. On the highest and most characteristic
plane of Metaphysics we shall venture but for a moment.
And that at once. For, if we are to be thorough, we
must start by determining our general attitude towards
our subject regarded simply as matter of experience.
Metaphysics, as it is commonly defined, is the theory
of experience as a whole. But this is what we would
have it be rather than what it is. Actually, it comprises
all thinking of which it is the guiding interest to bring
our manifold ideal constructions of experience into the
completest attainable accord, establishing such accord
on grounds that shall seem sufficient, even if they do not
exclude a logical possibility of doubt.
For, if ' experience is experiment,' Metaphysics, at once
because it helps to constitute, and because it contemplates,
experience, must itself be experimental.
But is experience experiment ? " Surely," the plain
man will say, " it is not wholly or merely so. There is
nothing in the ordinary sense experimental about a
haunting sense of pain. Rather it would seem as if the
statement were but intended as a simplification for
descriptive purposes of our perplexed experiences. ' Is '
must here mean ' is pre-eminently, characteristically, and
on the whole.' "
1 Sections II. and III., containing introductory matter which suffers from
much compression, may be omitted by the reader who is impatient to embark on
the main theme, so long as he is prepared to allow (a) that all philosophy must
be empirical in the sense that it must relate to an experience capable of having
such actuality as we have experience of 'personally' ; (6) that the scope of
Ethics, the theory of moral good, is narrower than that of the theory of the good
in life as a whole.
228 R R. MARETT v
Now the doctrine comes in the first instance from
the psychologists. Certain of them find in it an adequate,
or at any rate a convenient, basis for the particular
1 construction ' which, as psychologists, they deem true
or least untrue. The construction in question is built
up somewhat as follows. The conscious individual in
his active capacity — for example, as when he thinks — is
moved by interests. These sum themselves up in a
master- interest, his desire to live well. This master-
interest, however, defies all his efforts to yield it
immediate full satisfaction. Thus it ever harks forward
towards an indefinite future. Hence, since in conscious
experience regarded from this point of view the sense
of wanting perpetually both outflanks and outweighs the
sense of having, experience is fundamentally a trying,
and thinking in particular a thinking-onwards rather than
a thinking-out or thinking-to.
But is this point of view finally tenable ? Is it, not
merely good, but good enough ? Can we, not merely
as psychologists, but as reasoners in search of synthesis,
fairly content ourselves with it? That is what the
metaphysician — or, since one man may suffice for both
characters, the psychologist turned metaphysician — has
to decide as best he can. He has to decide, for instance,
whether, in the foregoing description, the stress laid on
conation and the conative moment in thinking, the
comparative indifference shown to the passive or merely
feeling side of our nature, the assumption that our diverse
and often incompatible interests can be summated, the
refusal to recognise the existence of states of complete
content, the identification of the reaching-beyond-itself
of consciousness with a reaching-forward in time —
whether all these things hold good and must hold good,
not merely for the purposes of psychology, but for the
purposes of the most comprehensive thinking possible
for us.
I hope, then, after thus openly acknowledging the
prerogative of Metaphysics as a final court of rational
appeal, that I shall not be misunderstood if I proceed
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 229
to declare that this psychological account of the essential
nature of experience is likewise to me metaphysically
satisfactory, in the sense that for the purposes of the
most comprehensive thinking it seems as good as can
be got.
§ 5. The standard of psychological reality is presentness
or actuality of experience. " But ' presentness,' " says
the metaphysician, "does not — cannot — hit the mark.
No ' what ' can be equivalent to ' that.' " " Its inexpres-
sibleness, then, being, if you will, presumed, let us go on
to express it as best we can." So answers the
psychologist ; and it is his great merit that he has had
the courage to set out on this task apparently foredoomed
to failure. The metaphysician, on the other hand, is
wont to tie himself up into such knots with his heaven-
sent principle of contradiction, that he cannot get ' fairly
started ' at all, much less find himself in a position to
' report progress.' Yet this, paradoxical as it may sound,
is just what the psychologist has done. Though lacking
a visible ' take-off,' he has started, he has got on.
Wherefore I am the more prepared to follow him.
The psychologist has showered ' whats ' on the
inexpressible ' that ' of actual experience, and has found
to his delight that some of them have the power to stick.
Ludicrously inadequate they doubtless are — if you start
with expecting adequacy of our thought - symbols.
Consider the so-called 'positive' attributes that the
psychologist has ventured to ascribe to his ' reality.'
Presentness, actuality, warmth, intimacy, all-inclusiveness,
the me-now, a psychosis, and so on — do any of these
anchors take firm bottom ? Or consider the so-called
' negative ' attributes — the ' infinite ' judgments which
proclaim their subject not merely this or that. ' Not in
time,' ' no quality, nor mode, nor subject, nor object, of
experience,' ' not felt, nor thought, nor willed,' ' not past,
nor future, nor the external world, nor you, nor God,'
' not one, not many,' etc., etc. — how hollow and meagre,
beside the fact, is all this indirectness ! " But the
absurdity," you say, " of trying to make me understand
230 R. R. MARETT v
that of which by intuition I am perfectly aware already ! "
Not at all. The psychologist, if he has somehow made
you understand what he is driving at, has performed a
great feat. He has compounded intuitions with you —
or, let us say (to leave ' you ' somewhat arbitrarily out
of account), with himself. He has projected the intuition
of presentness into the world of thought as an intuition.
He has found a universal standpoint in the fact about
which he is more certain than about anything else. " As
sure as I am alive and here" (what matter the words if
they but be ' to that effect ' !) represents his ne plus ultra
of conviction.
Which standpoint, I maintain, is no needle-point.
Though we be not angels, there is room upon it for us
all — even for the metaphysician. The practical failure
of his attempt to argue himself out of his sense of present
existence ought to provide him with an inkling of where
the counterfoil lies to the ' appearance ' he decries but
finds it so hard to get away from. Appearance attaches
to experience in so far as it is divided. I do not say
c divided against itself.' Experience does not always
make a 'poor show.' To be ' in ' it or 'of it is enough
to constitute show as such. It comes to this — that ' this
presentness ' is more vital to the existence in experience
of any of ' these presents ' than any of them are vital to
its existence. To the extent to which the intuition of
presentness does — I do not say ' must,' but ' does ' —
prevail over all discriminative analysis of the elements
presented, to this extent is the ' absoluteness ' of the
former exalted above the ' relativity ' of the latter. To
put it thus to myself is formally of course an experiment.
Yet, if ever experimentation reaches the limits, not of
logical possibility, perhaps, but of a logically valid
possibility, it must surely be at the point at which the
experiment is instantly confronted by the verification —
when presentness leaps up from the suggestion of
presentness, and overtakes itself.
§ 6. Psychological reality has been cited in order that
it may bear witness. It has been cited because it seems
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 231
to afford the most crucial proof that, in default of a
perfect proof, is to be obtained of the experimental
character of discursive thinking as such. Here is some-
thing which I cannot argue myself out of, nor yet prove
myself to have. Suppose I try to prove that presentness
is. I must put the proposition to myself as meaning
something — e.g. that, presentness removed, there would
be nothing. But how can I possibly be present to verify
the prediction ? The conditions necessary to the proof
fall outside one another, not in any merely temporal
sense, but really. Hypothesis and verification cannot
conceivably come together in any actual experience such
as we know in ourselves. Discursive thinking, then, it
would seem, is confined to the sphere of the actually
possible — nay to the sphere of representability, which, in
what the psychologist cannot but regard as its hither aspect,
is but the possibility of a possibility, a condition conditioned
by something itself conditional, namely presentability.
Thus the essence of all mere thinking — be it meta-
physical, or be it of narrower scope — is to be conjectural,
or, as I would prefer to say, experimental. For in a
sense there are no definable limits to conjecture. There
is an experimentation unworthy of the name that is
merely logical. Left to itself mere thinking cannot draw
the rein on its innate discursiveness. I can conjecture in
a barely logical way about a presentness of non-existence.
With a certain play and show of reasoning I can follow
the notion up to the very verge of suicide — intellectual or
actual. But, intuition being permitted to interfere, at
least this kind of guess-work is pronounced futile, and in
that pronouncement the utmost bounds of valid conjecture
are set up. Conjecture is restricted to readabilities.
In the conviction that they must be readabilities we
are at the point where conjecture verges on certainty.
On the other hand, zvhat the readabilities may or may
not do and be is purely problematic. Precarious inference
following in the wake of a capricious memory has to decide
as best it can. Framework and filling of our experience
— the things that must be, can be, have been, will be,
232 R. R. MARETT v
ought to be — all alike are doomed to a relative subsistence
which we can sufficiently know to be such by the per-
petual contrast it affords to the ever-presentness that is.
§ 7. The foregoing considerations will not have been out
of place in such an essay as this if they in any way serve to
point out to the ethical student in search of synthetic prin-
ciples that the true field for his energies lies, not in the no-
man's-land of dogmatic ' Metalogic,' * but in the workaday
world of Empirical Psychology. It is an essential part of
the experimentalist theory that in philosophic inquiry the
preliminary attitude makes all the difference. It is not
intended to oppose the free assumption of an intellectual
attitude to a no less free submission to the teachings of
fact. It were a bastard ' Pragmatism ' that proclaimed
licence as the final authoriser of law. The true Pragmatism
asserts no more than that in science nothing can be
' done ' unless the prior resolve be there to face the facts
fairly. It but reaffirms the old saying that ' none are so
blind as those who will not see.' The point of the remark
lies in its application to the case of the ' metalogician.'
When a man's presupposition is that he has no call to
face the facts because forsooth they are ' mere facts ' ; and
when further he maintains that this is no presupposition,
because he is a metaphysician, and Metaphysics can ' do
without presuppositions,' i.e., by beginning nowhere in
particular can end up everywhere at once ; then it is time
to retort on him with a reminder which, were it not so
necessary, might sound a truism.
Our concern, then, shall be, submitting ourselves to
that attitude of ' scientific ' inquiry so foolishly maligned
by some, to confront the never-ending task of correlating
the relativities — the apparent readabilities — of human
experience. As the data will be experimental, so must
be the results ; the stream cannot rise above its source.
From Empirical Psychology we shall gratefully accept the
' personal ' or ' anthropocentric ' standpoint, which, even in
order to discount its own bias, our thought, it would seem,
is in nature bound to adopt. And, as regards Metaphysics,
1 The word is framed on the analogy of ' metageometry,' ' metapolitical,' etc.
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 233
though we have already had recourse to its aid so as the
more circumspectly to choose our path, we had better
resolve that for the rest its place shall be on the further
side of the sciences. Though it may easily be less, it
cannot, so we have judged, be more than a final critical
survey of the organised facts of experience as if a. concrete
whole, with the object of guaranteeing us such intellectual
impartiality and breadth of view as may be possible in
our necessarily adventurous attitude towards life in
general. Hence, since we cannot in what follows hope to
defend our conclusions (save in so far as may by anti-
cipation have been done) against criticisms applying to
the general standpoint and broader principles of the
psychology they rest on, we had best at once renounce
all claim to metaphysical exhaustiveness, and be content to
regard our experiment, in virtue of its wide yet inter-
mediary scope, as simply an essay in General Philosophy.
III. Delimitation of Sphere of Ethics
S 8. Having trenched on Metaphysics just in so far as
seemed necessary in order to define our general attitude
towards the problem in hand, let us now proceed to get
within somewhat closer range of its specific matter. But
we have not yet done with preliminaries.
It will be remembered that the instances taken at
random to illustrate the antithesis between Origin and
Validity suggested of themselves two things. The first
was that Ethics is one amongst several ' organised interests '
of the human spirit. The other was that altogether outside
the sphere of the interests that move the will, yet at every
point conterminous with it, lies the mysterious domain of
instinct. It would, therefore, seem advisable for us to arm
ourselves at the outset with some notion of the limits — I
might even say 'the limitations' — of Ethics proper.
There is a confused impression prevalent that, because
all willed conduct has in some degree an ethical aspect,
therefore Ethics is the theory of human practice in general.
Nay, now that a clever, though unscrupulous, trick of
234 R- R- MARETT v
naming has enabled ' the unconscious ' to pretend to so
many of the attributes of spirit, it is hard to say where, if
anywhere, the line round Ethics would be drawn by some.
On the other hand, seeing that divide et impera is the
watchword of advancing science, it is hardly too much
to say that the crying need of Ethics is for narrow limits,
and the narrower the better. Indeed, if a competent
psychologist, realising that there are almost numberless
ways in which a man may bring himself to perform the
act he believes to be socially salutary, were carefully to
characterise the feeling or thought that exerts the decisive
influence in each case, I believe that a score of varieties
would spring into existence where but one form of moral
prompting is recognised to-day. And I believe that, of
these varieties, four-fifths might be eliminated as non-moral
without prejudice to Ethics as a theory of somewhat
comprehensive sweep.
Meanwhile, in an essay of the present kind, only the
broadest distinctions, and those most firmly founded on
common consent, can be noticed. It will, in fact, suffice
to place a treble limitation on the scope of Ethics. Let us,
then, briefly remind ourselves: (a) that life is not all conscious
life ; (b) that conscious life is not all morality ; and (c) that
morality as a product is but partially due to moral theory,
whether organised as science or as art.
S 9. (a) From a narrowly practical point of view there
may be little use in dwelling on the suspicion of agencies at
work in some indefinite ' outside,' whence they are some-
how able to control the phases of our spiritual life.
Nevertheless, the suspicion is too well grounded on
' appearance ' to be ignored at the scientific level of
thought. The question of our ' ideal ' self-sufficiency and
freedom, if not left to settle itself, must at least be raised
in such a way as not to prejudice an open-minded
recognition of the ' facts.' And, psychologically, the
facts are these, that a sense of freedom coexists with a no
less lively sense of constraint. Now, as, I hope, the sub-
sequent argument will tend to show, it is of vital importance
for man that he should allow himself to lean chiefly on
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 235
his sense of freedom. Even on deterministic principles
fatalism might reasonably be denounced as fatal policy.
There may, then, be good psychological reason why at
the moment of action, nay whenever it is action that
is directly contemplated, a man should try to forget
that his existence is hung somewhere between the
opposite poles of blind instinct and autonomous rationality.
When, however, it is simply a question of the ' facts,' to
hail ourselves as the absolute masters of our fate is not
even a ' noble ' lie.
§ 10. (jb) Next as regards the ratio borne by morality
to conscious life as a whole. Even if we be ready to say,
with Matthew Arnold, that morality constitutes " three-
fourths of life," at least we are admitting it to be less than
all. I would not deny that in the scheme of the
' organised interests ' a place might be assigned to, and
might even in some measure be occupied by, a supreme
science and art of life — call we them severally Philosophy
and Religion, or what we will. It can, however, but plunge
us in methodological chaos to identify such architectonic
and all-embracing theories of man's function in the
universe with the science and art of Ethics.
The determinate subject-matter of Ethics, as those who
have actually worked at its problems would seem generally
prepared to admit, is the conduct of life just in so far as
it is subject to the influence of a particular kind of praise
or blame. Whether administered by self or others, it is
usually regarded as belonging to a single kind. And the
characters by which this kind may be recognised are com-
monly held to be two, namely a reference and a quality,
which taken strictly together suffice to constitute it speci-
fically unique. So far it is comparatively plain sailing. The
difficulty begins when this reference and this quality have
to be defined. Both prove singularly elusive notions. Hence
the moralist as a rule is driven to indirect methods of de-
scription. He tries to bring out the nature of the differen-
tial characters of the moral judgment by contrasting them
with those of certain allied kinds of judgment. But thus
to transcend the limits of Ethics is not to widen them.
236 R. R. MARETT v
For example, let us suppose sociality to be the
distinctive object of ethical reference, and purity or
disinterestedness of motive to be the specific mark of
ethical quality. How is the moralist to invest these
terms with meaning ? Sociality is vague enough. And
as to purity or disinterestedness, how on earth is he to
convey an impression of them to a mind that does not
meet him half-way? Thus a strong temptation besets
him to 'stand outside' his subject. To his indistinct
analysis of the moral judgment he can at least oppose
some counter-analysis, say, of our appreciations of beauty
and truth on the one hand, and of our prudential
valuations — the calculations of ' enlightened selfishness ' —
on the other. The former show purity without the social
reference, the latter has the social reference but lacks
purity. Morality consists in the combination of the two.
" And now," says the moralist, " you have an inkling of
what I am driving at."
Subsidiary studies of this sort, however, but betoken a
certain inevitable multiplication of interests, due to our
natural tendency when seeking for side-lights to follow out
each abstract resemblance overfar. They cannot be held
to enlarge the sphere of Ethics proper. Doubtless such
methodological restrictions are somewhat tiresome to
observe. Tiresome or not, however, they are the prime
conditions of scientific continence and sane activity. It
is to save time and labour, and not for the simple pleasure
of framing empty cadres, that science adopts the watch-
word divide et impera.
Nay, it is precisely because it has hesitated to impose
any strict delimitative rule upon itself that ethical science
is still so backward. Ethics till of late has been merged
in General Philosophy to the prejudice of both. Its
ultimate presuppositions have received almost exclusive
attention. And the basis of fact, apart from which, as I
believe and have tried to show, the attempt to set up
presuppositions is the merest waste of time, has for the
most part been supplied by prejudice, by imagination,
and by the kind of uncritical history that embodies both
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 237
these sources of error in their most insidious form.
Ethical science, then, as one amongst many sciences
(sundry of which, indeed, are likewise ' moral,' but only in
the sense in which Mill spoke of the ' moral sciences '),
must confine itself to its special task, if it is to throw
light on what is but an aspect, though a highly important
aspect, of the problem — what are the conditions of the
best life possible for man.
S 1 1. (c) And now to complete our account of the limita-
tions of moral philosophy. It is surely obvious that, in
neither of its complementary forms, neither as science
pronouncing indicatives nor as art issuing imperatives, is
theory equivalent to practice, or moral theory to moral
practice. That our one hope lies in trying to think
rationally I do indeed believe. But a life that was all
rationality — a rationality, so to speak, that 'did itself —
were a condition of existence which even the ' metalogician '
finds it difficult to conceive, and which at any rate
he would scarcely regard as possible ' for us.'
I am not simply recurring to the ' fact ' of instinct —
of forces that impinge on the moral nature ' from without'
There are other forces in the background of consciousness
that, if not wholly blind, as the instincts, are at least
purblind. Constantly we hear the voice of reason
without being able to obey, and, like Goethe's Fisclier,
1 half sink and half are drawn ' from the living atmo-
sphere of active consciousness into the dim choking
depths of some half-physical passion. No doubt even
at these depths there proceeds a conscious life of a kind.
But the laws that govern it are such as to be hardly
comparable with those that hold good at the higher level.
Interest, purpose, selectiveness, will — these terms no
longer apply save as psycho-physical metaphors.
Nay, not to dwell exclusively on the obscurer phases
of ' organic ' consciousness, let us consider for a moment
the opposition between reason and feeling taken in their
broadest sense. The subject is clearly one that will
intimately concern us later, seeing that Origin and
Validity are to one another something as a judgment
238 R. R. MARETT v
based on history to a judgment based on impulse. Let
us note our own inevitable bias in approaching such a
problem as the one before us. There is at least a half-
truth at the back of the view that a man is born either
a Platonist or an Aristotelian, a Stoic or an Epicurean,
an intuitionist or a utilitarian, an idealist or a
materialist. We are spiritually- minded or worldly-
minded, believers or sceptics, romanticists or realists,
and so forth, primarily at least in virtue of a certain
fundamental endowment of massive sentiment. The
ceaseless ideas glance to and fro ; but they have rarely
force enough to affect the centre of temperamental gravity.
On the side of thought advance by give and take is rela-
tively easy. But constitutional prejudice, unlike thought,
recognises absolute differences. Indeed, save in the
case of the rarer spirits, reflection in regard to the
broader issues of life has scarcely a chance of making
itself felt save indirectly through the medium of what
may without prejudice be described as the ' social con-
sciousness.' The expert changes his mind for better
or worse. His generation, or the next, half-consciously
accepts the new faith. And last of all, perhaps, such
wholly subconscious agencies as imitation and early train-
ing succeed in the course of centuries in giving a fresh
turn to the national or racial ' trend.'
Morality, in short, implies the co-operation of disparate
and even discrepant factors, standing as it does to moral
philosophy as achievement to bare idea. Even though
we suppose, with the logical optimist, that the conditions of
such achievement are expressible in ideal form, and that they
must be so expressed ere perfect achievement is possible,
it is none the less a ' fact ' of our distracted workaday
experience that it is one thing to yield full intellectual
assent to some counsel of perfection, and quite another
to succeed in living up thereto.
ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 239
IV. Ground-Plan of Proposed Synthesis
8 1 2. And now let us close with our task. We have to
reconcile as best we can the standpoints of Origin and
Validity regarded as presumably cognate principlesof ethical
explanation. Perhaps, then, after all a certain measure
of success awaits us. A first glance would seem to show
that these two points of view have far more in common
than the uncompromising attitude of their respective
partisans would ever lead us to suspect.
We have just seen that Origin and Validity, though
standing primarily for purely theoretical points of view,
present an antithesis of which the force and sharpness
is largely due to an underlying opposition between two of
the deepest-lying elements of our nature. Origin is prim-
arily a concern of thought, Validity a matter of feeling.
And thought is not readily brought to act on feeling,
nor feeling persuaded to accommodate itself to thought.
Smith's ancestry is at the mercy of the dreary
lucubrations of the Heralds' Office. His present worth,
on the other hand, is as he and his neighbours feel about
it, and (up to a certain point, at least) is independent of
disclosures on the part of Burke or Debrett.
But we must not press this simile. To inquire into
moral origins is no piece of gratuitous snobbery to be
resented in the interest of the honest convictions of the
hour. In this connection we must be respecters of
descent. In the case of our moral habits and ideas
descent affords a most important criterion of re-
spectability, though taken by itself the criterion is
inadequate.
Moral principles are no isolated atoms. Rather they
may be likened (for our present purpose, at any rate) to
the functions of an evolving organism. The higher the
organism, the more completely will a hierarchy of
co-operating factors have been established. And in such
a hierarchy authority will tend to be bestowed on tried
service. For the latter offers a promise of further service
240 R. R. MARETT v
to come, which, if occasionally disappointing, is never-
theless the surest amongst available means of forecast.
In the case of the virtues, then, their previous record,
so to speak, as distributed over the whole series of the
affiliated forms they have assumed in the course of their
history, may be accepted as a guarantee, good as far as
it goes, of a future career of usefulness. Changes in
function or even structure may have affected the family
identity to a considerable extent. Still, a tendency of
a more or less marked kind is likely in every instance
to be discernible. And on this it ought to be possible
to found some conditional anticipation of events.
If, therefore, we understand by Origin, not some
hypothetical first - beginning, but total back - history or
previous record, surely it is plain common -sense that
considerations of Origin must have some weight in our
appreciations of right and wrong. And since it is
equally obvious that thought unsupported by feeling is
powerless to found a habit of will, here, then, are manifest
indications of concurrence on which to base our recon-
ciliation of these standpoints.
§ 1 3. Let us next for a moment take stock of the
misconstructions to which either principle is subject at
the hands of its extremer partisans. There is clearly
critical work for us ahead. Indeed, the outlook portends
that, could prejudice, presumably of a metaphysical kind,
be put at arm's length, a compromise between the two
standpoints would quickly settle itself, to the infinite gain
of Ethics as a specific branch of inquiry.
{a) The uncompromising champion of Origin is all
for ' ultimate origins ' — whatever those may be. He is
probably at heart a materialist. And it must be allowed
that contemporary evolutionism is only too ready to play
into his hands. He is one of those whose perverted
taste for the transcendental leads them to confine their
interest almost wholly to what may be nicknamed ' the
science of prehistorics.' This constitutes a region of
inquiry wherein the imagination can roam at its own
sweet will, untrammelled by books of reference or other
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 241
base mechanical apparatus. Such a person has a 'short
way' with the upholder of Validity. If his mythical
protanthropus is credited with a nasty habit of avoiding
cold water, then baths are a worthless convention, and
homo sapiens is a fool for his lixiviatory pains.
Now our general policy towards such a person will
plainly be to declare that he has not the smallest right to
speak in the name of the Comparative Method ; that
Origin means history ; and that the history of morals
means the description, anthropological and psychological,
of the relations which a certain group of interacting
spiritual, quasi - physical, and (if we find that it pays
ethically to go so far back) even physical forces have
displayed during such time as the process in question
has actually lain open to what may be termed in the
broadest sense ' historical ' observation.
(J?) The no less uncompromising champion of Validity
may be portrayed in a sentence. He is probably an
idealist ; but, for all that his metaphysical prepossessions
ought to lead him to distinguish between ' present ' and
' ideal ' worth, he has nevertheless conceived a violent
prejudice in favour of Things-as-they-are.
With him we must gently reason thus. " Are not
moral intuitions good in the good man, but, in the case at
least of the impenitently bad man, are they not bad ?
Granted, if you will, that our intuitions are bound to
outrun any power we may have of testing and verifying
their effects. But what of our generation ? Suppose that
you who are good and I who am bad have stuck to our
intuitions on the whole through life for better and worse
respectively, will the object-lesson we afford be wholly lost
on society ? Does society frame its moral standard by
blindly compounding a mass of intuitions? Surely the very
intermingling of moral natures must, as it were, generate
thought. Whatever its members as individuals may do,
society at least is sure to display some approach to
1 intelligence without passion ' — some capacity for impar-
tially assigning effects to their apparent causes. But here
we have a kind of moral philosophy in the making ; and
R
242 R. R. MARETT v
its compiler, society, by no means deaf to historical con-
siderations. Clearly, then, it is our duty as moralists to
recognise the existence of this Ethics of common
sense. Nay more, it is our one and sufficient duty, by
contributing method in the shape of a wider inductive
survey and closer reasoning, to make it into an Ethics that
truly deserves the name."
§14. Now in what direction do these inchoative con-
clusions and criticisms point ? Will they not serve to
give us an inkling both of what sort of synthesis we are
likely to achieve, and of how we must proceed so as to
achieve it ?
(a) Firstly, then, as regards the sort of synthesis, or
compromise, in prospect. Our recent conclusions are
suggestive in the following way. Origin, we decided, was
history, or performance up to date. Validity, on the
other hand, seemed to stand for a more or less intuitive
perception of the worth of certain moral principles ' in
themselves ' ; which perception, however, though immedi-
ately it tended to express itself as a feeling or sentiment,
yet might be regarded as to some extent embodying the
results of a previous acquaintance with the history of the
moral experiments of mankind. At the same time we
were made aware of the extreme indirectness of the
process whereby this knowledge came to exert an influ-
ence on the conduct of the individual. It looked as if
his wisest policy on the whole was to rest — provisionally,
as it were — on his intuitions. But we may be sure that,
if the facts of life, subjective and objective taken together,
show it to be, and to have ever been, his wisest policy to
put the logic of feeling before the logic of history, the
science which aims at rationalising morality will have to
pronounce the policy and the logic that guides it in the
strictest sense of the term reasonable. No doubt, as we
saw, the social consciousness is in a manner capable on
its own account of elucidating the conditions of moral
conduct. Nay more, it seemed to do this in so impersonal
and objective a way as hardly, one might suppose, to
include amongst these the condition involved in this need
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 243
and inclination on the part of the individual moral agent
to trust to his intuitions. The social consciousness, how-
ever, is something that exists between members of society
who before they are anything else are ' persons.' Hence
it cannot, in virtue of its own impersonality, undertake to
ignore a condition that applies, if not collectively, yet
distributively and individually, to those socially-minded
persons for whom it legislates, namely the need and in-
clination felt by every moral subject to interpret the moral
life from within itself rather than by reference to its
circumstances. All of which would seem to hold good
ethically, whether as metaphysicians we choose to call
this tendency ' provisional ' in view of some anticipated
apotheosis of the mere understanding, or prefer to regard
the priority of the intuitive to the discursive reason as
from every point of view final for the human spirit.
Thus a first glance would seem to indicate that an
intuitionism, tempered by critical reflection, yet character-
istically and predominantly an intuitionism, is the Ethics
natural and proper to man. So much for the claims of
Validity. On the other hand, the expert investigator of
moral Origins would likewise seem to have plenty to do.
His function is to be editor-in-chief of that ' critique of
moral confidence,' apart from which such confidence is
indistinguishable from mere rashness. The moral subject
does not walk by faith because faith is blind, but, on the
contrary, because, purblind as it is, it is yet the most long-
sighted of his mental powers.
(b) Secondly, as regards method. The criticisms of
the previous section foreshadowed a simple, and, I hope,
adequate, plan of procedure. They showed us that we
are dealing with two parties, each of which has been led
by its own ' irreconcilables ' to overstate its case. Evi-
dently, then, our policy as would-be arbitrators is, so to
speak, to summon mass-meetings of each party in turn.
Face to face with their pretensions, let us try to reason
away whatever therein seems excessive. Could this be
done, the formality of a final adjudication ought not to
delay us long.
244 R- R- MARETT v
To particularise, let us first confront the 'evolutionary'
inquirers into Origin with the ' facts,' and ask them
whether their working hypotheses do not practically fail to
account for the almost unconditional Validity of certain of
the ' higher ' — more ' spiritual ' — moral motives. Then,
on the other hand, let us contrive such a version of the
rights of Validity as shall secure it undisputed primacy,
and yet not absolute immunity from all control, direct or
indirect, on the part of the study of Origins. It will
thereafter but remain to draw up some sort of balance-
sheet of concessions given and received, in order to
determine for each principle its legitimate share of
authority in morals.
V. Mere Origin as an Ethical Standpoint
§ 15. That there are evolutionists and evolutionists is
being gradually recognised, even by those who are disposed
to distrust all alike that arrogate to themselves this title.
For our present purpose, however, they must revert to all
the inconveniencies of close companionship. In regard to
morals, at least, let them be treated as being of one mind.
To the ethical portions of the Descent of Man and to the
Data of Ethics let there be ascribed a common faith, the
faith of naturalism, and a common set of working
principles, the principles of natural selection, of the
association of ideas, and so forth. Possibly injustice will
hereby be done to the individuals concerned (though of
individuals, if only for reasons of space, there will be little
mention for good or ill). But this is to be condoned
on account of the greater ' objectivity ' that may by this
means be given to something that can only be described
as an ' atmosphere ' — an atmosphere thick with meta-
physical bacilli which the average man of science (is he
not used to vitiated atmosphere ?) breathes with comfort
doubtless, but not perhaps without a certain cost.
The evolutionists that I have in my eye — the ex-
tremists of whom I would present a composite impres-
sion— may be charged with subscribing to some form
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 245
of that moral philosophy to which Mr. Spencer has
given the question-begging name of ' rational utilitari-
anism.' * In support of such a position they are wont
to bring forward an array of evidence which (in my
opinion at least) would be sufficiently convincing, were
it but strictly relevant. Nature, they assert, that is,
physiological nature, is wholly given over to an
'unconscious utilitarianism' — understanding here by
' utility ' the quality of making simply for survival. It is,
for instance, in view of this ' biological end ' (for these
naturalistic philosophers are prodigal of psychological
metaphor) that protective mimicry produces the leaf-
pattern on the butterfly's wing. The whole essence of
instinct, in short, consists in this its function of
protectiveness. Its be-all and end-all is to modify the
play of the vital forces to the profit of the organism in its
struggle for existence.
Well, suppose we grant this. Suppose we say that,
regarded as an ' empirical law,' the generalisation fairly
fits the ' facts.' Ethically, however, the crux of the
utilitarian argument does not, and can not, lie here. Why
forsooth must we take the alleged ' law ' for more than it
is logically worth ? We have been presented with certain
1 facts ' — certain things that arc, and moreover are in
virtue of physiological nature being what it is. But why
therefore conclude, as if the parity of reasoning were
unquestionable, that utilitarianism, in the sense of the
pursuit of sheer survival, provides the ' law ' {i.e. policy,
not generalised observation) that ought to govern the
conscious nature of man ?
" At any rate a most familiar crux," says the
naturalistic philosopher. " The things that are and
the things that ought to be — the inevitable ' ditch.'
But we have not the smallest intention of jumping it,
because we do not want to get across. There is fairly
firm walking-ground on our side. On the other side —
well, our friends who are after Free Will, the Absolute,
and so on, may be standing still in order to think better,
1 Cf. Data of Ethics, § ax.
246 R. R. MARETT v
but they certainly do not seem to be getting on." — " But
we," let us answer, " are with you on your side of the ditch.
With you we entrust ourselves to the ' facts ' ; and would
inquire with you whether they all point one way."
§ 16. For there are, or have been, those loftily unpractical
metaphysicians who would declare that to reason from
the ' is ' of empirical science to the ' ought ' of normative
Ethics is nothing short of a paralogism. That free or
unconditioned will has alone the right to pronounce the
' ought ' is, they would contend, an axiom. Which axiom
rests on a priori grounds of proof. Wherefore it is bound
to remain wholly unaffected by any merely phenomenal
evidence of a ' trend,' be it physiological or psychological,
in human nature.
But they are at best but dubious allies of Validity that
thus seek to cut it off ' as if with a hatchet ' from Origin.
Moreover, whilst their talk makes for unconditional dualism,
they live (like the rest of us) a life of distracted monism.
The ' ought ' of their practice gives the lie to the absolute
1 ought ' of their books. To their concrete consciousness
(for are not they, even as we are, human?) the 'ought' of
practical life is a unity qualified by an inner diversity. It
is two things at once — subject to actual warring experi-
ences, and assertive of a de jure authority to combine these
under a law. No, there is almost more hope for that other
apriorist Mr. Spencer, who, if he renders ' ought ' com-
pletely superfluous by treating it as the empty subjective
echo of an inflexible objective ' is,' at any rate errs in the
cause of synthesis. And even cocksure materialistic
synthesis is better than the dualism that spells philo-
sophic despair.
Let us, then, stick to our initial resolve to be
experimental. Let us entrust ourselves to the guidance,
uncertain though it needs must be, of a critical empiricism.
For us there shall be a psychological ' ought ' that is no
less empirical fact in its way than the uncompromising
' is ' of instinct. We shall frankly admit it as part of our
working hypothesis with regard to moral obligation that
certain determinations ' from without ' do as a matter of
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 247
' fact ' form a moment in it. On the other hand, we
shall no less frankly assume on the strength of
' appearances ' — on the testimony of consciousness, to wit
— that we are also able to some extent to determine our
own courses. Such a double-edged provisional view is not
dualism, but its antidote. It postulates no ultimate incom-
patibility, but rather foreshadows eventual convergence.
Origin and Validity, if ever they are to fight it out and
be friends, must first be given the chance of meeting on
common ground. And then by all means — al\ivov
atXtvov eiTre, to 8 ev vlkcltw.
§ 17. It will perhaps be objected, however, that some
evolutionists at all events are quite ready ' at a certain
level of thought ' to recognise this duality in unity of the
psychological ' ought ' ; that, in particular, a distinction
which opposes the psychological effects of ' natural ' to
those of ' conscious ' selection is finding its way into
current sociology.
Quite so. The distinction is there. But is it used ?
It is old enough, indeed, to have borne fruit. For it goes
back as far as Bagehot — that most level-headed of
the exponents of Development. Already in Physics and
Politics we find the contrast drawn between the savage
mind, " tatooed all over" with its indelible unalterable
notions, and the mind of one living in the " age of
discussion," who can put off the old man in favour of
the new almost as readily as he can change his coat.
But in the mouths of Bagehot's successors the distinction
survives as a vague platitude. (After all, what can be
vaguer than current sociology ?) Or worse, where Bagehot
employed a few picturesque expressions to differentiate
the two stages of a continuous evolution, the solemn
parade of a technical antithesis now gives the suggestion
of an absolute separation. ' The savage is selected, the
civilised man selects ' — this is the sort of statement we
read, or might read any day.
But it is just this kind of phrase-making with a
hatchet that is not wanted in comparative psychology.
For, when we speak of the effects of ' natural ' as opposed
248 R. R. MARETT v
to those of ' conscious ' selection, what ought we to mean ?
Surely, the pure instincts. But every genuine student of
social and moral origins knows that, as far as the pure
instincts are concerned, he is, for the practical purposes of
his science, as far off from them when dealing with the
savage as when dealing with civilised man. For example,
the analogies between the habits of animals and the
customs of the most backward native of Australia prove
so faint as to cast no light at all on any of the special
developments within the moral nature of the latter. The
savage is no automaton. He reveals more ' inwardness '
the more closely he is studied. Doubtless, however, he
differs from his civilised brother in being relatively
unselective. He too has his principles. But they come
to him early in life, and, when they come, they come to
stay. Hence Nature tends to deal with his heresies
somewhat after the manner of a Spanish inquisitor. She
gets at the heresy through the heretic. But with civilised
man the inquisitorial method of conversion is on the
whole a failure. One martyr makes many proselytes.
Principles have, as it were, made themselves independent
of persons. Consequently they must be acquitted or
condemned on their own merits by a jury of their peers.
Or, to vary the metaphor, the struggle for existence is
transferred from civilised mankind to his ideas. The
ideas fight, and the civilised individual, being ' adaptable,'
finds salvation by consorting with the winner. But the
most primitive 'Why-why' is also reflective and
1 adaptable ' — at any rate in regard to the smaller
matters of life. Generally and on the whole, he too is the
self-determining man, and not the animal which is
determined. The presumable instincts of some far-off
progenitor cannot, by the most ardent advocate of
' parallelism ' as a principle of constructive psychology, be
said to have reproduced themselves at all directly or
exactly in the sentiments and ideas that ' react ' — as the
phrase is — upon his conduct. These instincts may, or
may not, in some metaphysical sense have been gradually
'translated ' into terms of consciousness. The translation,
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 249
however, is at any rate of so free a description that the
working psychologist is bound to distinguish, and to rate
at a certain value of its own, the peculiar contribution of
the translating mind.
What, then, is wanted in the comparative psychology
of morals ? The answer is obvious—" Not question-
begging terminology, but question-solving research." For
ours is the empirical ' level of thought ' ; and the empiricist
has no business to decide a priori whether a man's sense
of Validity enables him wholly or in part to guide him-
self, or whether Origin (in the naturalistic sense of
instinct), operating ' subliminally ' as a vis a tergo, does
all the guiding for him. He must put aside extreme
metaphysical views, such as that all consciousness is mere
' epiphenomenon,' or, contrariwise, that all consciousness
as such involves selectiveness in the sense of spontaneity.
His business is to go to the facts — to let them speak for
themselves. Now his facts are prima facie all of a piece,
in that they are all alike psychical. On the other hand
their import is ambiguous, some making for determinism,
others for freedom. Hence he is bound to work in the
first instance on the hypothesis of a duality in unity. He
must concede the possibility of there being two moments
in the moral nature, a ' fatal ' and a ' free.' And he must
try his best to disentangle these two threads, when
analysing a given ' mixed state ' of consciousness, by
means of such empirical tests as the appearances
themselves suggest.
When, however, we would seek for enlightenment on
this, or any other, point in psychological histories of moral
evolution, behold none worthy of the name are in
existence ! Who, then, shall blame us if as irresponsible
essayists we venture in a fragmentary way to anticipate
the tenor of such an investigation ?
§18. Let us, then, first consider the case of a specific
development throughout which the leading part would
seem to be played by the ' fatal ' moment in our moral
nature.
When the savage embarks on matrimony he is moved
250 R. R. MARETT v
thereto by a considerable variety of converging ' causes ' —
to use a neutral term. In the background, according to
the evolutionist, there must be postulated as most
' original ' cause of all a mating instinct. This, of all
' deferred ' instincts, is, he maintains, the most complex.
It embraces diverse moments, the ' objects ' of which range
from the mere gratification of appetite, or of a jealous
desire for ' sexual appropriation,' to the cherishing, feeding,
housing, and protecting, of wives and offspring. All this,
however, is in the background. The practical anthro-
pologist knows of instinct only as a hypothetical something
that has precipitated and particularised itself in a mass
of customs. These customs, no doubt, are relatively —
but only relatively — ' blind.' It is true that, for example,
the time and mode of his marriage are virtually pre-
determined for the tribesman. But to say that imitation
and tradition ' insensibly ' put their special, and, as it were,
local, stamp on the plastic congenital tendency is either
to speak in a metaphor, or to go beyond the facts. It
were indeed far truer to say that a specifically social
consciousness, though of a rudimentary kind, has already
come into play. Nor are higher manifestations of its
influence far to seek. Marriage custom as supported either
by an actively persecuting public opinion, or by a system
of gentile vendetta encouraged by public opinion, is
nascent law. Or again, disasters, whether coincidental or
causally connected, attending the violation of marriage
custom concur with various other grounds and occasions
of belief in a supernatural principle to reinforce ancestral
usage with the authority of religion. And though, as
compared with law, religion may be somewhat capricious
in its choice of a social cause to champion, yet as often as
it happens to take the side of salutary practice, it is
probably the more effectual ' pro-ethical sanction ' of the
two. Further, with the coming into being of such legal
and religious ordinances — which, as a rule, will coincide
in their injunctions, as for instance when they jointly
prohibit marriage within the kin, or with certain kinsfolk
— there must correspondingly arise (the evolutionist at
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 251
any rate cannot disallow this appeal to his ' law of
association ') prudential considerations in the breast of the
individual. Which considerations, i must be admitted,
constitute integral factors in a social consciousness, seeing
that in respect to the conduct they enjoin, though not as
regards the motive they allege, they are actually on a par
with ethical judgments proper. Nor indeed are indica-
tions lacking of the existence of distinctively ethical
sentiments and ideas on the subject of love and marriage
in the minds of the most backward savages known to
anthropology. Two illustrations must suffice. Let us
note how such deliberate and solemn pronouncements as
the ' ten commandments ' at initiation or the wedding-
address — not to mention the thousand folk-tales and
proverbs that lightly flit from mouth to mouth — exalt
the virtues of the good husband for their own sake and ' in
themselves,' that is, as simply fine and admirable. Or
again, let us note how the rhapsodies of the love-sick swain
(though doubtless apt to be tinged with a more or less
delicate sensuality — such as appears so frequently in their
modern counterpart!) yet are found likewise to profess
a tenderness and disinterestedness of affection that
argues the presence of a certain ethical ideal amongst
the incentives of courtship.
§ 1 9. Well (taking for what it is worth this perfunctory
sketch of a vastly complex development), what are we to
make of the ' causes ' alleged ? Do they make on the
whole for determinism, or do they make on the whole for
freedom ? On the face of them all the causes are alike
psychical. Some are ethical, the rest are (in Mr. Spencer's
phrase) ' pro-ethical.' If a non-ethical determinant,
namely instinct, lurk in the background, it must be
discovered by the flavour of ' Origin ' that it imparts to
its effects in consciousness. Perhaps the adherent of
Validity exclaims : " If the claimant cannot appear in
person, surely the case goes by default." — No, as empirical
psychologists, we have decided to hear him through his
representatives. If, however, these halt and hesitate in
their report, that is his look-out.
252 R. R. MARETT v
Let us allow, then, in regard to these causes, that,
although all are alike in being psychical, and even, in
a broad sense, purposive, they form a mass of ambiguous
appearances. In the case of some the ' biological end '
of sheer survival seems ' really ' to be subserved. In the
case of others the enhancing of the worth of life seems
sufficient motive ' in itself.' Sometimes the (assumed)
primordial instinct seems directly reproduced in the
conscious tendency. Sometimes it seems replaced by
something independently authoritative. Nor is the
ambiguity noticeable merely when we look at the facts
of consciousness ' from the outside.' When we look into
ourselves it feels at times as if we were half unconsciously
shaping our policy to suit our instinctive leanings, at
other times as if we were compelling those leanings
to subordinate themselves to our sense of worth and
right.
Let us, therefore, give the naturalistic thinker a fair
hearing when he pleads for 'original' survival -seeking
bias as the predominant moment in man's career as
a domestic being. Let us even put up with such
exaggerations as there may be in the statement of his
case. When the most that he can affirm is a relative
predominance, and no definite criterion of predominance
is to hand, the literary device of ' colouring ' may not
unpardonably be employed as a scientific make-shift.
8 20. " The moral sentiment," we shall suppose our evolu-
tionist to argue, " which makes itself felt in the domestic
virtues, is on the whole and predominantly but the slavish
echo of a congenital tendency. With this tendency the
sentiment in question is doubtless out of harmony at times.
To that extent, however, it is out of harmony with man's
real and abiding welfare — to wit, the welfare that consists
in surviving and causing to survive. The home life of
savages may present forbidding features to the idealisers
of love and marriage. Their semi-instinctive customs,
nevertheless, are capable of sustaining a breed of hardy,
and so presumably happy, men. Nor does the civilised
man, for all that he may be shocked to hear it, depart
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IX ETHICS 253
far from the ways of his remote forebears when bent on
founding a family. With him as with them love is
mostly ' blind.' Reasons, moral or otherwise, fail on
the whole to affect it. Civilised love pays little conscious
attention to material, and less to physiological, considera-
tions touching the future. Nor can it even be affirmed
that a coldly rational matrimonial policy when tried has
been found to pay. Nor would any one maintain that
the schemes of marriage reform propounded by the wise
have redounded to their credit. Or once more, is it not
significant what little prominence is given in the writings
of the moralist to the canons of domestic duty —
understood in any broad and scientific sense ? To marry
' well ' is hardly reckoned amongst the cardinal virtues.
And why? Because the trend of instinct renders ethical
precept on this head practically superfluous. You say
you are free. You say that ' follow Nature ' in our sense
of ' Nature ' cannot serve as a general rule of life. That
may be, or may not be. At any rate, however, you must
admit that, in respect to marriage, Nature, unwilling that
the preservation of the race should depend on the
fluctuations of opinion as to the merits of this or that
ideal, has made what is virtually a saving-clause in the
charter of freedom you suppose her to have bestowed on
man. ' Follow Nature,' in fact, in regard to marriage,
is a rule that is capable of satisfying prudence and
conscience alike. It is not in point to reply that various
pro -ethical and ethical sanctions have a perceptible
' reactive ' effect on the family life of the veriest savage.
These influences are ' really ' effective only in respect to
the choice of means. The supreme end of race-propaga-
tion is ' given ' all along. And it is no less ' given ' when
it is somehow represented within the field of conscious
attention than when it operates occultly as a pure
biological force. You may insist, if you will, on the
ideal possibilities rather than on the actual achievements
of conscious selection in this connection. But harp as
you will on the intrinsic reasonableness of some Platonic
marriage-machine that shall knit woof and warp together
254 R. R- MARETT v
according to the principles of an enlightened psychology,1
you cannot make out much of a case for the superiority
of man's to primal nature's ways. As far as the history
of marriage goes, our evolutionary utilitarianism with its
doctrine that sheer survival is the ' real ' standard of the
good stands approved by your practical failure to point
in this case to a self-supporting spiritual motive that
works — that puts itself prominently at the head of affairs,
and justifies its position in consciousness by the felt
excellence of its peculiar fruits."
And now as impartial judges let us give ear to the
other side.
§ 21. The upholder of conscious selection may be sup-
posed to open his reply by remarking that his opponent
has considerably underrated the ' reactive ' effects of such
forces as religion and morality on love and marriage ;
that, consequently, he will set forth with all due regard
to the claims of history the development of a principle —
the principle of Purity — which has precisely this appear-
ance about it, that, whether ultimately a product of
natural selection or not, it has at any rate cut itself
entirely free from instinct, and acquired the position
of an independent self-feeding focus of moral energy.
The sense of moral purity, according to the evolutionist,
is the outcome of taboo. How taboo itself arose, however,
he is hardly able to explain. Why should man ' in the
beginning ' by force of instinct have avoided contact with
certain things by no means always palpably noxious or un-
clean in themselves ? And why — when all allowance is
made for the sanctioning power of custom, that ' instinct to
conserve instincts ' — was this special kind of avoidance
made so absolute, so invincibly will-compelling, by the
world-wide sentiment of the race ?
It will be said — and perhaps, historically speaking, not
without good reason — that awe of the Uncanny is in the
main responsible for this attitude of ' reverential detestation'
on the part of the savage towards so much that he need
but understand to appreciate and use. But what naturalistic
: Cf. Plato, Politicus, 310.
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 255
explanation will account for the existence and power of
this mystic awe ? The follower of Darwin will doubtless
be content to describe it as a ' by-product ' of the growth
of the intellect. But is this any explanation at all ? Is it
not merely a curt restatement of the fact to be explained ?
This fact is that certain manifestations of mind to which
the evolutionist cannot ascribe any function — that is,
which do not seem to him to subserve directly and in
themselves the so-called ' ends ' of natural selection — do
nevertheless persist by the side of other activities which
he regards as palpably furthering survival. All that ' by-
product' does, therefore, is to mask the gratuitous
assumption that some ' latent affinity ' compels the two
groups of phenomena, the useful and the useless, to stand
or fall together. ' By-product,' in short, represents but
the colourless negation of a raison d'etre — presumably
designed as a counterfoil to the teleological view that the
so-called by-product exists and persists on the strength of
the promise it contains, in other words, of its eventual
destination. " But no," replies the evolutionist ; " ' by-
product ' has doubtless its metaphysical implications of a
nature unfavourable to teleology, but it likewise has its
strictly scientific use. It serves to mark the actual,
though possibly unexplained, connection between a
particular form of ' irrational quantity ' and a particular
race-preserving tendency. Thus for example, the mystic
horror which the savage displays towards a corpse or
towards an issue of blood may be connected by the use
of a notion such as ' by-product ' or ' overflow ' with that
definitely protective instinct which warns him, or at any
rate warned his ancestors, of the proximity of death and
danger. These taboos, in short, fall into line with what the
biologist knows as ' cases of misapplied instinct' * Nature
works on a system of averages, and has to allow for a margin
of error." To all of which the champion of Validity
replies that expressions such as ' by-product,' ' overflow,'
and ' misapplied instinct ' may have a certain designatory
value, but that their explanatory value is nil.
1 Cf. Darwin, Descent of Man, i. 3 ad fin.
256 R. R. MARETT v
" Meanwhile," he continues, " is it not at all events
a far cry from these questionable rudiments to that
sentiment of moral purity which in the heart of civilised
man calls aloud (with so much, be it admitted, of the
solemn insistence of primitive taboo) for the scrupulous
avoidance in thought and word and deed of all that by
the aid of its own self-attested standard it judges to be
morally contaminating and abominable? Doubtless the
evolutionist will be forward with his ' explanation ' — to
wit, his mere ' exterior history ' — of the transition. He
will tell us, for example, that lustration was first of all
adopted as a means of ' drowning the infection ' — at this
point, probably, already conceived as literally a ' spiritual '
infection ; and that afterwards, not so much by analogy
as by a direct extension of scope, lustration and the
lustral idea came to be applied to the cleansing of ' sin,'
namely the infection derived by contact (at first including
even involuntary contact) with certain impure things, as,
for instance, bloodshed. But, granting the plausibility of
this ' exterior history,' where do we find in it any
explanation of the fact that man's sense of purity has
shaken itself free of its back-history in becoming rational
and ethical ? Taboo is virtually irrational. It may
indeed in a secondary way further tribal survival by
strengthening pre-existing habits of self-discipline. But
primarily, directly, intrinsically, of its own right as an
independent institution, it has no utilitarian function of
this or any other kind to which the adherent of mere
Origin can refer us. Taboo may provide the holy water.
But it does not provide the sentiment that puts the water
to a moral use."
8 22. Perhapsthe time has scarcely come for us to attempt
to arbitrate between the rival pleaders. But it certainly
would seem as if in his concluding question the supporter
of Validity offers something of a poser to the rational
utilitarian. " Whence," he asks him, " is this sentiment
of the moral value of Purity, this appreciation of the
virtue that ' holiness ' imparts ? " To which the only
possible reply forthcoming from the side of Origin must
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 257
be somewhat as follows. " Ethical sentiment at first grew
strong within its proper nursery, the field of domestic
and tribal co-operation. Then it proceeded to moralise
religion, art, and the various other intellectual superfluities
that man had found time to enjoy, or groan under, by the
way. This moralisation imparted to these latter as it
were an entirely fresh dose of life. Thus, though useless
as regards their original proclivities, they have been
actually enabled to enrol themselves amongst the factors
which make for the survival of civilised man."
But these superfluities that turn out by a ' chance ' not
to have been superfluous after all — are they ' natural,' even
according to the working hypothesis which the evolutionist
makes concerning ' Nature ' ? Surely it is putting a
considerable strain on the ' Happy Accident theory ' to call
upon it to account, not merely for ' spontaneous variations,'
but likewise for the ' spontaneous ' persistence of all sorts
of superfluities. These obliging ' sports ' of nature
persevere in their being although there is no ' biological
end ' for them to serve. Then lo and behold, one day the
moral consciousness awakes to the fact of their existence,
and does them the supererogatory favour of providing
them with an ideal end !
We are not called upon here to decide whether the
naturalistic ' explanation ' of the genesis of the idea of
moral purity is metaphysically possible or impossible —
whether it is metaphysically conceivable or not that
' external nature,' like man, is capable of indulging in
sports and slips, and then of making up the lost ground
by subsequently turning them to useful account. Our
concern here is entirely with the balance of empirical
probability. We have left behind us that serene, if barren,
region of philosophy where all compromise between the
claims of Matter and Mind is on a priori grounds for-
bidden. We are allowing that some of our propensities
may bear as it were automatically on simple race-
preservation, whilst others again may possess as ideal
and spiritual motives of conduct a validity of their own.
And we are appealing to Origin in the sense of history
S
258 R. R. MA RETT v
for the means of verifying, or refuting, our working hypo-
thesis.
Such, then, being our method, let us be the less ready
to conspire offhand with the adherent of mere Origin — of
the theory that the ' unconscious utilitarianism ' of outer
nature is the real force at work in the moral consciousness
— to conceal what even he must allow to be gaps,
inevitable, perhaps, but still gaps, in an otherwise
plausible argument If the history of the idea of moral
purity ' appears ' to testify to the moralisation, by a free
act on the part of our spiritual nature, of an unmoral and
purposeless taboo, then, putting aside for the moment all
metaphysical prepossessions, let us allow that the balance
of empirical probability is in favour of the spontaneous
origination of a specific ideal by the mind. And so too,
if previously it appeared that the evolutionary historian of
the development of love and marriage made out his case,
let us be prepared to admit as regards another specific
' end ' that the mind was on the whole but passively re-
affirming what the animal nature had predetermined.
§23. It would occupy too much space, were even the
evidence available, to proceed on these lines to examine
the human virtues one by one with the object of dividing
them, according as a ' fatal ' or a ' free ' moment seemed
to predominate in their constitution, into ' natural ' and
' spiritual ' — or whatever we are to call those of them
which on the hypothesis of an all-controlling struggle for
bare existence have to be regarded as more or less
unessential and adscititious. Indeed, were it possible
thus to deal with them on their individual merits, it is
exceedingly probable that we should soon be driven to
abandon this method of hard-and-fast contrast in favour
of some more discriminative mode of treatment. As it is,
however, we must work to suit our limitations. The
most we can attempt, before proceeding to sum up on the
question of the value of mere Origin as an ethical stand-
point, is a rough classification of the virtues under heads
as determined by their history, and a wholesale character-
isation of the prevailing purport of each group according
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 259
as it tends to emphasise the one or the other kind of end,
the ' natural ' or the ' spiritual.'
Regarded as matter of history the virtues seem
naturally to fall into five groups — the Domestic, the Tribal
or National, the International, the Personal, and the
Transcendental. Of course this, as any other classification
of the kind, must be pronounced ' artificial ' in the sense
that it is nothing but a piece of student's apparatus. If
it has a principle behind it, however, it is this eminently
natural and historical principle, that, speaking very
broadly, this arrangement of the virtues corresponds with
the order of their appearance in time. Some sort of
incoherent family life comes first ; then through the clan
something worthy of the name of tribe is reached ; then
syncecism, intermarriage, trade, religious proselytisation,
and, not least of all, war itself break down the hostile
barriers between people and people ; then, compara-
tively late in the day, the unit (who before was but a
fraction) 'finds himself; and, latest of all, the aspira-
tions of certain of the most unitary of the units
towards the highest kind of individuality lead them
to sacrifice everything to this, or some closely allied, ideal
principle.
If, then, we accept for working purposes this
classification of the virtues into five groups, we shall find
that the first two groups appear on the whole to subserve
the ' natural ' end of race-preservation, and the two last to
make for a ' spiritual ' self-perfection, whilst the remaining
group presents intermediate features.
§ 24. Of the Domestic virtues we have heard something
already, though we were not allowed to notice in any
detail the many-sided nature of the influence they exert
on race-preserving conduct, as notably, for instance, when
they pave a way for the advent of the National virtues by
the promotion of gentile solidarity. Affection, dutifulness,
respect, fidelity, and so forth, as between husband and
wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, and
generally as between all those who are bound together by
' kindly ' (that is, kin-ly) relations, are to all appearance
260 R. R. MARETT v
the outcome of a single ' natural ' impulse ; which impulse,
if it undergo considerable modification in respect to the
channels along which it flows as the ' control ' of
consciousness increases, yet at all events would seem to
keep fairly true to its assumed ' original ' destination, the
maintenance of a healthy and fertile breed of men. No
doubt there are certain changes which go near to affecting its
main character. For example, as, with the development
of the National virtues, society grows more widely
coherent, the mutual support of the whole brotherhood of
blood-relations becomes less and less essential to the
prosperity of each separate household ; so that the function
of the family ' instinct ' is to this extent curtailed. Or
again, as there is gradually developed a refined sense of
the claims of personality, the ' utilitarian ' aspects of
marriage tend to fade into the background, and romantic
love as between ' kindred souls ' comes to assert itself
under favourable circumstances as truly an ' end in itself.'
To which, however, the supporter of the theory of the
predominating ' natural ' fatality may not without some
reason reply that, in the former case, one instinct is but
foregoing a part of its dominion in order to make room
for another, whilst, as regards the latter case, he may
urge that the exigencies of ' spiritual love ' do not at any
rate tend seriously to interfere with the workings of the
underlying physiological cause.
§25. Again, it is a colourable view that the National
virtues, no less than the Domestic, must be ranked amongst
the indispensable conditions of a persistent society regarded
simply as a kind of ' natural ' organism. The traces are
apparent in man of a ' social instinct,' which, by bringing
about a devotion to common interests, a friendliness of
intercourse, and a willingness to give and take, converts
the state into a compact body, capable as such of
asserting itself with success as against competing associa-
tions. Patriotism, good-fellowship, and justice (not to
mention in their detail the virtues subordinate to these
three, whereof loyalty, charity, and honesty are severally
examples) would seem to be the triple historical outcome
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 261
of what — to borrow Kipling's phrase — may be called the
' pack-law ' of the social animal —
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward
and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the
Wolf is the Pack.
Doubtless, however, the history of these virtues has
its other side. The spirit of patriotism as exalted in the
self-sacrifice of a Decius almost touches the Transcen-
dental virtues. The refinements of social intercourse,
as interpreted, for instance, by Aristotle in his analysis
of the ' elegant virtues,' seem to take their place less
naturally amongst the objects of an ' art of living ' than
amongst those of an ' art of living well.' Or once more,
justice, the sympathetic respect for another's ' rights,'
surely presupposes as a condition of the sympathy a
' sense of rights ' on the part of the individual such as
lies at the root of the Personal virtues. Allowing for
all this, however, on the ground that our present contrast
of tendencies is admittedly a drastic expedient, let us
concede to the party of mere Origin that perhaps the
character which shows uppermost in this group, when
everything has been taken into account that tells
the other way, is still that of ' preliminary virtues ' —
appliances of group -survival, without which man must
live ' cyclopically,' nay, in such a condition of chaotic
atomism that, as the Jungle Book suggests, not even
homo homini lupus would any longer be predicable of such
a being.
§ 26. To attempt to represent the Personal virtues, that
is, the various forms of commendable self-respect, as
altogether lacking a ' natural ' base would be, of course,
to break off all communications with the allies of Origin.
But this is precisely what, at our empirical ' level,' we
can not, and must not, do. Let us, therefore, go so far
as even to accept the theory that, of all the instincts
proper to the biological organism, self-preservation is
the most original. " For the individual organism," argue
the defenders of this view, " is historically prior to the
262 R. R. MARETT v
social. It is true that the most rudimentary forms of
life look like 'jellified republics.' But their constitution
is not really political. Either the parts cohere, and the
economy they compose is therefore to some extent
physiologically ' internal,' and thus individual as against
them. Or they tend to split off and become each an
independent centre of vitality — once more the individual."
Well, be this as it may, let us be prepared to allow that
the socially respectable tendencies of man as self-regarding
— the laudable ambitions, implanted in him by tradition
and training no less than by instinct, to live, to love, to
own, to enjoy, to be distinguished in his person, to be
forcible in his personality — are in some degree, at all
events, the historical outcome of that nisus to persist
though it be at the expense of others, which all living
matter manifests in one or another form.
But is this the only side — or the striking side — to
the history of these virtues ? Has not the original nisus
in a most remarkable way ' translated ' itself out of a
mere ' will to live ' into a ' will to live well ? ' " What
does not bear on survival is by-product," is the curt
answer of the upholder of natural selection. Well, we
cannot discuss that ' explanation ' here. At least,
however, let us note that, in connection with the Personal
virtues, ' Nature ' would seem to allow the superfluous ' will
to live well' considerable play. It is not the force and
range of the human appetite for personal well-being that
is, naturalistically, so unaccountable. It is rather the
extraordinary extent to which that appetite, when
circumscribed by a due regard for the similar appetites
of others, can be indulged without prejudice, and
yet without apparent assistance, to the struggle for bare
existence. Most unaccountable fact of all from this — and
indeed from any — point of view, man would seem actually
capable of deliberately framing, and carrying out, the
resolution to put an end to his life. But can this be
regarded as mere exhaustion and pale extinction on the
part of the natural propensity to persist ? Is it not, rather,
to all appearance the positive conquest of instinct by
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 263
something absolutely alien to it ? How can instinct have
generated that out of Itself which from above, as it were,
turns upon it and slays it ? How can the stream rise
proprio motu above its source ?
§ 27. At precisely the other end of the moral scale to
suicide we find the Transcendental virtues, and from them
may hope to obtain a less ambiguous illustration of the power
of the human will to prevail against Nature ' even to the
death.' These virtues embody the aspiration towards a
more or less unconditional perfection of existence — the
1 life after God.' To the most refined spirits they appear
to contain ' in themselves ' the promise and foretaste of
such a life. Holiness, pure unselfishness, the love of the
ideal — these seem not so much to be 'of the 'natural
life ' as ' above ' it. Representing, then, as they do the
supremest and maturest effort of morality to transcend itself,
these virtues do not lend themselves readily to historical
derivation, if ' history ' is to mean biology. No doubt the
biologist can point to plenty of instances of apparent
self-devotion occurring in the animal world — the mother-
bird that risks her life for her offspring, and so on. But
does the parallel quite hold good — any more than that of
the savage, or indeed the civilised man, who is prepared
to die fighting for home and country ? Does such
bravery, save in rare and easily distinguishable cases,
amount to ' devotion to principle ' ? It is by the lofty and
broad ideality attaching to them as motives, rather than
by any particular form of objective manifestation, that the
Transcendental virtues make themselves known. Which
essential ideality of theirs it is that indicates a close
connection between their development and that of the
higher forms of Personal virtue. For it is characteristic
of them that, whereas they cause themselves to be pursued
almost apart from considerations of personal or even
national survival, they nevertheless, by the intense subjec-
tivity of their appeal to the individual consciousness, tend
to suggest a quasi-personal interest and value that is
somehow able to outlast the phenomenal fact of death.
" Simply the miser and his gold," says the evolutionary
264 R. R. MARETT v
associationalist. " Your ' martyr of conscience,' just like
the suicide or any other kind of madman, is a victim of
the idie fixe? — Perhaps. But this is at all events to put
additional burthen on the theory that Nature in the sense of
blind Chance stumbles along a mean of coincidences, and
touches passing perfection in producing and preserving the
' average man.'
S 28. The International virtues may be taken last in
order on the ground that they present mixed features. Thus,
on the one hand, the principle of ' syncecism ' may be
invoked in favour of a ' natural ' explanation of their
development. For, undoubtedly, it furthers group-survival
that the hospes should under certain conditions be
recognised in the hostis. The area of trade, marriage,
military alliance, and so forth, being widened, the tribe is
reinvigorated by the introduction of fresh blood and fresh
ideas. On the other hand, a humanitarianism, which
contemplates ' the parliament of Man ' as an ideal pos-
sibility, and which, moreover, has borne actual fruit in such
an act as the abolition of slavery throughout Christendom,
has rather the appearance of a spontaneous creation on
the part of our moral and rational nature. The alternative
view presumably is that, in so far as humanitarianism does
not ' assist natural selection ' by serving as a specious
cloak for national aggrandisement, it is an ' overflow,' and
a dangerous kind of ' overflow ' at that. A curious notion
this, that Nature should grow ever more wild and freakish
in her promptings as man feels himself to attain more
nearly to steadfastness of ideal purpose and endeavour !
829. And now to sum up on the subject of the value of
mere Origin as a standpoint and starting-point of ethical
explanation.
We have tried to look at matters from the point of
view of Origin (understanding, however, by Origin, not
any occult fons emanationis, but simply past history) ;
and what do we find ? Not by any means that the
moral of the facts is unambiguous ; much less that it
is unambiguously in favour of the contentions of ' rational
utilitarianism ' — or, to give it the name it deserves,
ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 265
' naturalistic utilitarianism.' For there was borne in upon
us (by the help, it is true, of some very violent contrasts) the
suggestion of a tendency superinducing itself upon a
tendency — of a spiritual process growing out of a natural
process, and yet modifying, and even transcending, it. It
was far from appearing that survival (in the evolutionary
sense of race-preservation) is the end that wholly, or on
the whole, has weighed consciously with the successful
type of man. On the contrary, it took some special
pleading to show even that survival was the general
motive presented in the ' preliminary virtues.' Thus the
appearances seemed to tell, if anything, against the theory
of ' rational utilitarianism,' so far as the latter might be
supposed to base itself on experience proper, and, in its
' normative ' capacity, to argue from a genuinely empirical
' is ' to a no less empirical, that is, experimental, ' ought.'
It was, however, fairly obvious all along that, in so far as
it pretended to rest on history, ' rational utilitarianism ' was
a sham. Its appeal was never to veritable history, but to
something conceived to lie at the back of history, namely,
the ' is really ' of an a priori metaphysical naturalism —
something, therefore, no better, but, so far as it is given to
masquerading, worse, than the confessedly a priori ' ought
really ' of the transcendentalist intransigeant. With
a priori naturalism, then, considered as a ' method of
origins ' which offers to provide an ethical ' norm,' let us
now shortly deal.
Evolutionary naturalism as a metaphysical theory of
experience as a whole undertakes to formulate an all-
embracing view of the facts of life. Needless to say,
however, it finds this an excessively difficult thing to do.
A certain pair of disparates, namely consciousness and
biological process, it is quite at a loss to reconcile. Hence,
unification being apparently beyond its reach, it has to
resort to a pis-aller. It attempts simplification. It
pronounces biological process the ' reality ' and conscious-
ness the ' appearance.' Its definition of life is that it is a
conditional inheritability of bodily functioning. Its essence
consists in the inheritability — the quality it has of allowing
266 R. R. MARETT v
itself to be handed on from generation to generation.
Thus life is a sort of Athenian torch-race. The torch,
which is consciousness of life, is a wholly decorative
feature of the ceremony. For it cannot afford an incentive
to the runners. Not merely has it no value in itself. It
cannot even stand to them as the symbol of something
else of value to them — as the symbol of a possible prize
to be won.
Consciousness, then, being as such no conditioning
element in the process it ' appears along with,' but its
empty echo, all our valuations, seeing that they are
necessarily ' for ' a consciousness, are empty echoes too.
Meanwhile naturalism has projected itself beyond con-
sciousness. The tale runs that a despairing drill-sergeant
once bade his awkward squad — " fall out and look at
themselves." It is not added that they actually did so.
Naturalism, however, has performed this precise feat.
But it is seemingly more easy to project oneself beyond
consciousness {facilis descensus !) than from beyond to
project oneself back. To pass from this materialism to
the formulation of an ethical norm — from the assertion
that all valuations are superfluous to the pronouncement
that one kind of valuation is, notwithstanding, better than
another — demands of one the kind of intellectual back-
somersault that is apt to land one anywhere and nowhere
at once. Not thus, however, does it appear to naturalism.
" Though we be but echoes," it says, " we must try to do
the echoing properly. Now reality is persistence in time.
Therefore persistence in time is what we ought really to
aim at. For only consider ! It is really that which we are
aiming at all along — if we would but recognise the fact ! "
— But who can make anything of such a rigmarole ?
§ 30. Naturalism, however, is not always of this uncom-
promising kind (though indeed the more rigorous form of
the creed is popular enough). There is also naturalism
the mere ' point of view.' Suppose, then, that a thinker
of ' scientific ' leanings puts his case thus. " I do not
pretend to unify. I am content (as you have said) to
simplify. I merely wish to see how far a 'biological
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 267
view ' of life will carry me. I for one reckon existence as
the condition of all good things. Well (metaphorically,
if you insist), so does Nature. But Nature, according to
biology (which no doubt, as you will remind me, is
simplifying within its own sphere when it uses function as
an evaluatory test), has its ' sports,' its purposeless by-
products. Then why not consciousness too ? Trans-
ferring my biological standard to Ethics, I ask : Are these
idealistic excesses — " exultations, agonies " — of the moral
consciousness, on which you have laid so much stress,
useful, that is, favourable to the prolongation of man's
existence on earth ? If they positively interfere with
this result, I for one vote that they go. If they neither
hinder nor help, I say that they are not worth the
serious attention of a truly practical man. If, however,
they are of use, biologically speaking as it were — ah !
that would be another matter altogether."
To which let us reply : " As tried by your test of
' function ' (which, whether you allow it or not, harks back
to the idea of reality as persistence in time), surely these
excesses, as you are pleased to call them, of the moral
consciousness are no purposeless accidents, since they are
not eliminated as the race evolves, in the way that
biological ' sports ' are eliminated, but persist, nay flourish
ever the more wantonly the farther man proceeds along
the path of secular change."
Now doubtless there are more heroic ways in which
philosophers have sought to rid themselves of such a foe.
They have, for instance, refused on a priori grounds to
regard goodness as in any way conditional— whether upon
the maintenance of the bodily life, or otherwise. But we
have chosen to meet the empiricist on his own ' level.'
We have appealed to his own standard of reality — per-
sistence in time. If, then, it turn out when the ' facts ' are
examined that certain moral sentiments and ideas, to
which he cannot ascribe any particular race - preserving
function (for it must be a particular and specific function
if he is to conform to the requirements of biology), do
nevertheless refuse to be eliminated, but persist and acquire
268 R. R. MARETT v
strength as they go, will he not admit that they have a
prima facie empirical validity of their own ? And suppose
he do, will not he go a step farther ?
We are not imputing to this upholder of naturalism in
a modified form any definite materialistic creed. We do
not ask him, therefore, to reconsider such a theory as that
consciousness is an echo, an epiphenomenon, or what not,
in favour of the view that consciousness may after all be
capable of ' loading the dice ' — of bringing about co-
incidences in a way that the mathematical doctrine of
chances cannot warrant. We are only asking him to
proceed a step farther at the same empirical 'level' that was
adopted at the start. He is supposed to have allowed on the
strength of the historical ' appearances ' that a prima facie
validity of their own attaches to certain ' spiritual '
tendencies as distinguished from other ' natural ' tendencies
which have a use that is biologically obvious. Well, at
this point — so far as history goes, so far as the standpoint
of mere Origin serves him — -he stops. There seems to
be, historically speaking, so little to choose between the
validity of the one, and the validity of the other, set of
motives, that we obtain no unambiguous l is ' with which
our experimental ' ought ' may be brought to conform.
We are left inquiring : Which of the two kinds of motive
has, empirically and for us, the higher validity ? Mere
Origin, it seems, cannot tell us. But is there no supple-
mentary test? The following, then, is the further step
which we ask our friend of ' scientific ' leanings to take
with us : Will he stand by and offer us his criticisms
whilst we consult our inner sense of Validity to see
whether it can supply us with a moral criterion of a more
nicely discriminative kind than mere Origin seems able to
provide ?
VI. Validity as an Ethical Standpoint
§ 3 i. Our farther step, it has been agreed with the up-
holder of naturalism as a mere point of view, must not take
us beyond the empirical ' level.' In a sense, then, we can-
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 269
not leave history. We may have done with ' back-history '
— with mere Origin. But there is also present history —
the latest, still unfinished, chapter of the history of Man.
Which latest chapter may, for our present purpose, be
held to consist of psychological matter, and that mostly
of the kind acquired by ' introspection.' Now intro-
spection, paradoxical as it may sound, is essentially a
historical method. The introspective psychologist as such
undertakes to be ' scientific' But this is to have already
transcended the bounds of a purely ' solipsistic ' interest in
self. For by that resolve he commits himself to the task
of observing what is psychologically common to himself
and other persons. He is, as it were, chartered by himself
and them to describe the appearance to itself of a typical
mind of to-day ; and, if he cannot make the ' personal equa-
tion,' it is simply bad introspection. Meanwhile, of course,
all introspective work tends to wear a sort of ' solipsistic '
colour on its surface. I naturally do not emphasise the
all-pervading assumption that this of mine is also yours.
For by that same assumption the direct proof or refutation
of my assertions lies within your reach. Why, then, should
you have your attention distracted from the facts described,
by being forced to hear at the same time how I in some
more or less indirect fashion have come to believe them
to be the common property of our minds ?
What power, then, has introspective psychology to
assist us at the present juncture ? It will be remembered
that the back-history of the virtues appeared to present
us with two classes of motive, the ' natural ' and the
' spiritual,' both having a certain prima facie validity of
their own, even as tried by naturalistic standards ; and
that, therefore, we felt ourselves driven to seek for some
supplementary test that might yield us an unambiguous
' ought,' whenever (as in practice must constantly occur)
the need should arise for us to set one kind of motive
against the other, and, for better or worse, to choose
between them. In search of which test we have
proceeded from ' back -history ' to 'present history.'
What, then, does the latter tell us ?
270 R. R. MARETT v
Surely this — that, as empirical matter of fact, the
moral consciousness of the normal individual of to-day
bids him, in every case of conflict between principles,
to choose the ' higher ' ; enables him immediately to
distinguish in a general way between ' spiritual ' and
' natural ' principles ; and, at the same time, teaches him to
recognise the one kind as in itself of ' higher ' validity
than the other.
Now this, I would maintain, or something yielding an
analysis approximately the same,1 is introspectively the
fact. Nor have I any objection to restating the matter
from a point of view more acceptable to the evolutionist.
I am equally ready to maintain it to be the fact that the
successful individual of a successful race to-day normally
feels thus, and, what is more, that he normally tends to
' act up ' to such a feeling.'2 I would even bargain with
the evolutionary materialist and say that, if he will admit
that these intuitional promptings form an important class
of ' appearances ' which he can neither incorporate within
his system of utilitarian ethics nor explain away, I for
my part am willing to concede as a bare possibility that
the successfulness of that ' higher life ' for which these
promptings pave the way may after all in some un-
intelligible way be its ' biological reason.' But I insist,
meanwhile, that the moral consciousness gives no hint
that there is, or could be, any such reason at the back
of these its most solemn injunctions. Nay more, I would
add that, if any hint of the kind intrude itself from
some extra-moral region of thought, a shock of moral
revolt is the natural result.
8 32. Nor does introspective psychology merely show
us that these intuitional promptings speak the master-
1 The reader may prefer Wundt's formulation of the law of " the hierarchy of
moral ends," which runs as follows : " When norms of different orders contradict
each other, that one is to be preferred which serves the larger end : social ends
come before individual ends, and humanitarian ends before social ends"
{Principles of Morality (trans. Washburn), p. 140).
2 To much the same effect a recent popular work (which, however, loses sight
of the ' person ' in the member of society, and is thus restricted to taking an
' outside ' view of human development) describes social evolution as ' ' the
progressive subordination of the present and the individual to the future and the
infinite" (B. Kidd, Principles of Western Civilisation, p. 84).
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 271
word in morality. It can likewise show us in a manner
why — that is, how — this is so. Let us revert to the plan
of broadly colligating Validity with a kind of feeling and
Origin (in the sense of the study of historical cause and
effect) with a kind of thought. Considering this feeling
and this thought in their relation to future action, let us
name them respectively ' foretaste ' and ' forecast.' Why,
then, on the showing of introspection, is foretaste rather
than forecast supremely effective as an authoriser of
ethical conduct ?
id) Well, for one thing, it is matter of direct experi-
ence that will, though never merely strong, or the
strongest, feeling, nevertheless depends on strong feeling
as its proximate condition. Thinking, on the other hand,
so far as it is no mere echo of passion, but ' real' thinking,
that is, a process of discursive reasoning governed by its
own laws, is ' cool.' Thus it is easy to see how ' the
native hue of resolution ' may be ' sicklied o'er with the
pale cast of thought.' The mind cooled down by thinking
becomes, for the nonce at any rate, and permanently, if
it dwell too long in the world of mere possibilities, dis-
qualified for action. Discursiveness as such means
diffusion of interest, dissipation and distraction of attention.
As thought moves from symbol to symbol, each of these
must in some degree be felt. Feeling, however, as such
involves appetition. Which appetition, though it partly
helps to further the action of thinking, is partly wasted by
the way. Hence each fresh step in thought levies a tax
on the by no means unlimited fund of volitional energy
available for the time being. Contrast the forcibleness of
intuition. It presents an object that is distinct, because
relatively discontinuous with its psychical background, and
capable therefore of seizing upon the whole man. It
presents, not one amongst several bare possibilities, but a
content hardly discrepant with, because so absolutely com-
plementary to and continuous with, me-now — a 'to be '
which even now almost ' is,' as the mental panorama is
focussed to a vivid point and a burst of sanguine assurance
heralds the consummating act of will.
272 R. R. MARETT v
(&) Further, let us note what forecast as such must
mean for us as beings who desire to will reasonably, that
is, so as to have the theoretical and the practical
' conscience ' satisfied at once. A mere forecast, even
though its framing involve a minimum of discursiveness,
cannot, if taken as such, yield that sense of logical
cogency which in the case of an abstract proof expresses
itself as a feeling of conviction having close affinity to the
feeling of moral obligation. So long as we are but
striving to analyse the immediate, that is, any object so
far as it presents itself to us as a self-contained whole
having no ' other ' that cannot be excluded for the nonce
by the very act of mental objectification, we are subject
to the feeling of logical necessity — of complete, if but
temporary, satisfaction with our thought. In a case where
we are forecasting, however, we are trying to argue from
the present to the absent — from the known to the
unknown. We are ' speculating,' in short, in the business-
man's sense of the term. Hence, in proportion as we
are aware of what we are about, we cannot but be
haunted by a more or less lively presentiment of possible
mistake and its consequences. It is not wholly or mainly
from forecast, therefore, that there is born the confidence
which can restore us to spiritual unity and set us free
to ' identify ourselves ' with the object of desire.
(c) Lastly, moral forecast as moral is liable to a special
kind of ineffectiveness with which personal experience is
likely to have acquainted us. The material out of which
we shape a moral forecast must consist in part of facts
relating to the nature of our own emotional leanings and
likings. But knowledge 'of or 'about' feelings is
different from knowing, in the sense of experiencing,
feeling as it is ' in itself.' Nay more, the available
mental energy being at any moment limited, the one
kind of experience is bound, temporarily at least, to over-
ride and outbid the latter. The sense of the feeling gives
way to the sense of the logical relations of the concept
whereby the feeling is represented. Reflection holding
the attention, the feeling reflected on survives as but the
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 273
bloodless phantom of itself. But this deadness of sensi-
bility produced in us by self-analysis is utterly out of place
in the presence of a call to action. To pass to the state of
mind wherein we are able to make the feeling integral to
and effective in the object of desire requires the forcible
revival of the desiccated image. This, however, is bound
to put a great strain on the imagination ; which strain
cannot fail to communicate itself to the moral economy
as a whole. How fatal, for example, it usually is to
reason about the pleasures likely to accrue from a given
course of action. As we dwell on the thought of them,
they grow ever paler and more impalpable, till paralysing
doubt assails us as to their worth — a doubt that probably,
could we but know it, is not in the least justified by the
actual condition of our power of enjoyment. How direct
and infallible, on the other hand, is the suasion of moral
foretaste. When intuition is allowed the upper hand in
consciousness, what we feel at one moment is made the
object of endeavour at the next, and never a chance is
given to doubt and dally by the way.
§ 33- " Well and good," answers the 'rational utilitarian.'
" I have no doubt that introspective psychology testifies
in some such way as you have described to a certain
ineffectiveness of moral reflection when unsupported by a
vivid sense of what it feels like to be moral. But you
prove too much. The blind obedience of the slave to an
authority he is incapable of understanding exhibits a
1 sanguine assurance ' not a whit less effective — to say the
least of it — than that which you suppose to be supremely
authoritative in the normal moral consciousness. So I
ask you to come one step farther. What so immediately
effective as instinct ? I am ready to admit, if you insist
on it, that the application of the terms resulting from an
analysis of human action to the kind of life or experience
studied by the biologist is more or less metaphorical.
But, seek as you will to expel the word ' instinct ' from
your psychological text-books, the fact has to be faced
that certain deep-seated forms of natural trend determine
the human will as (I contend) no mere ideal kind of
T
274 R- R- MARETT v
moral intuition has ever succeeded in doing, instilling
absolute confidence by focussing the attention on strong
physical feeling and on that alone. Instinct, then, by
the showing of the very introspection on which you rely,
is, as our naturalistic ethics also assumes, the pattern
laid up, not in ' heaven,' but in those inmost recesses of
our nature to which the mere consciousness has no direct
access, whereto moral conviction must approximate in
proportion as it is sound. The natural and not the ideal
feelings just because they have more of the true intuitional
flavour about them — more forcibleness and fatality — have
the first call on our attention."
To which the champion of Validity may justly reply as
follows. " Introspection supports history in testifying to
the ' fact ' that what you choose to call the instinctive
1 will ' is being steadily replaced, as civilisation and
education advance, by a will of equal or greater energy
that rests on the ideal feelings. It is useless for you to
try to put back the hands of the clock. Inwardly and
outwardly the appearances favour the view that spirit
has come to stay. Construe the implications of this ' fact '
as you will. Say, if you are not going to desert the
working assumptions of evolutionism, that spirit stays
merely because it pays — that its validity consists, not in
what it seems to be, but in what it does. But at least
admit as an empiricist that practically and for us it has
intrinsic validity. When the bent of progressive man is
towards attending more and more to what of itself seems
to claim more and more of his attention, why bid him
hand himself over by a sort of spiritual suicide, by an act
of will-renouncing will, to an apparently decaying force, the
very existence of which ' in ' — we cannot rightly say ' for '
— him is not a matter of direct consciousness at all ?
Naturalism ? Why, it is rank £//maturalism."
§34. And now let us suppose the rational utilitarian,
unable to convince us — and, let us hope, himself — that
instinct is the prototype of the effective moral intuition of
to-day, to fall back on his second line of defence. " Leav-
ing instinct out of the question," he proceeds, " what of
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 275
authority ? The savage is at the mercy of custom.
irdvToov vofios fiaatXeix;. Well, is the civilised man who
trusts to his intuitions a whit more self-determining?
Is not ' I will my station and its duties ' a survival of
barbarism ? To put foretaste before forecast may be wise
policy for the masses — for the white slave. But can
intuition afford due scope for the exercise of a reason-
able will ? Utilitarianism, rationality, science — these go
together, and together they determine human progress.
The intuitionist may apply to himself the words which
the immortal Silver addresses to his fellow-conspirators :
' We're all foc's'le hands. . . . We can steer a course, but
who's to set one ? That's what all you gentlemen split
on, first and last' "
" For look at the facts," he continues. " See what
the despotism of foretaste involves in the matter of
applied Ethics. What aptitude do the intuitionists show
for tackling concrete problems ? Their catalogue of par-
ticular virtues is a farrago of abstractions, destitute of all
arrangement and inner consistency. And the farrago
boasts an immutable nature. It descended wholesale
from heaven at the time of the original ' spiritual
influx ' ! Or at best, when evolutionism has made
the fact of moral progress too patent to be any longer
denied, some quibbling philosophy of ' type ' and ' stan-
dard ' l is requisitioned to explain how this precious
pantheon of sacred forms does somehow condescend to
adjust itself to our changing needs and uses."
" And all this comes of exalting foretaste at the expense
of forecast — of dwelling on the ' quality ' of moral action
and leaving the ' reference ' to settle itself. Mere feeling
is only too prone to attach itself to this or that ideal,
irrespectively of its bearing on the rest. Thus it is that a
principle puts on ' unconditionality ' — say, the principle of
not lying to a murderer, for all that the lie might save the
life of his intended victim. But the psychologist knows
better than to respect the ' man of one idea,' the victim
of ' mental obsession.' He is typically the lunatic."
1 The allusion is to Lecky's History of European Morals, chap. i.
276 R. R. MARETT v
" Meanwhile, given sound political and social institu-
tions, controlled by intelligent men who think for them-
selves, it will be for the best that intuitions, promulgated
by authority, should govern the moral life of the unedu-
cated. Since these cannot discover for themselves what
is right, it remains that they should adopt the surest plan
of bringing themselves to do what a superior wisdom
decides to be to their advantage. For them let principles be
as ' unconditional ' as you please. Here is the opportunity
for intuitionism. I am willing to concede — though
unfortunately your inveterate intuitionist is not likely
to set store by the concession — that reflection ' on a sup-
posed right to tell lies from benevolent motives ' is not for
the uneducated. And, since the uneducated outnumber the
educated by ten to one, I allow you that in nine cases out of
ten a simple-minded concentration of sentiment on the
beauty of truthfulness will best serve the cause of morality.
For feeling, as you urge, is concentrative, calculation
dispersive. The victim of ethical obsession, as compared
with the puzzled blockhead who labours in the toils of a
shillyshallying casuistry, is in the less parlous plight.
The latter utterly fails to mobilise such moral powers as
he has. The former at all events acts — acts immediately
and strongly, though, apart from a wise authority in the
background, not circumspectly. But Ethics proper is the
concern of the educated. Show me if you can that an
Ethics which puts foretaste before forecast is natural to
the educated man whose highest aspiration it is to be
self-determining — to exercise a reasonable will."
All of which lies open to a retort which, if it be
necessarily somewhat ad hominem, is at all events hardly
to be rebutted from the side of mere Origin. " Who are
you that speak of rationality ? You have to admit that a
certain persistent feature of morality — its predominant
ideality of foretaste — is unaccountable on the hypothesis
that whatever fails to bear on survival must sooner or
later be eliminated. ' By-product ' forsooth. An attempt,
not even specious, to gloss over a negation. You
pretend to rationalise life, nay the cosmic process. And
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 277
behold the plain facts about morality contradict that
boast of yours : ' Grant us the variations, and we will
explain their subsequent history.' ' Science ' you call it.
It is good science to give yourself up wholeheartedly to a
working hypothesis to see how far it will take you. But
it is bad science, and bad manners to boot, having
planted yourself down upon what you are pleased to call
1 first principles,' to seek thence to shout all rival methods
down, as if it were a priori demonstrable that there must
be one path, and one path only, to the top of the
mountain. ' By-product ' indeed. To credit an inscrutable
chance, or, if you will, an Unknowable God, with whatever
exceptions your so-called ' laws ' are forced to tolerate is
an artifice worthy of the ' age of miracles ' ; and Hume, as
you are wont to assure us, has shown that miracles
are nonsense."
8 35. So much, then, for the slur of irrationality which
evolutionary utilitarianism would cast upon the theory
that those ideals of the moral consciousness which seem
the highest are the highest for us as moral beings. ' He
that is without sin,' we are tempted to say, ' let him first
cast a stone.' And, as for the allegation that intuitionism
tends to divorce foretaste from forecast, the reply is obvious,
There may be a bad kind of intuitionism ; but that is not
the kind we are now defending. Foretaste and forecast,
according to the view we are concerned to uphold, must
severally and alike be allotted their natural and proper
place in one system of normative Ethics ; only the place
of foretaste is naturally and properly the higher.
Let us put the matter in a slightly different way.
Let us, in order as far as possible to satisfy the rationalist,
substitute for foretaste, with its suggestion of something
alien to thought, namely feeling, its logical counterpart
and equivalent, the concept of a self-justifying moral end
or norm. Our contention may now be restated thus.
Ethics as Ethics is restricted to the normative form. Its
supreme principle of explanation must be an ' ought ' — or,
if you will, that a certain ' ought ' is, and that it is, and can
be, for us nothing else but an ' ought.' " Ethics, then," you
278 R. R. MARETT v
say, " finally bases itself upon an appeal to authority."
Yes, but not in your sense of ' authority.' The authority
in question is not external to the moral subject. It is just
his personal self — or rather that part of himself which
appears supreme in a moral context, and in no context
of experience appears anything but supreme for all the
purposes of morality.
" But we are speaking of different things," perhaps you
urge. " You are describing Ethics the art. I, as a
rational utilitarian, am seeking to establish Ethics as a
science." The answer is that normative Ethics is at once
art and science. As an art which tries to produce
morality it posits the general object of moral conviction,
1 right for right's sake,' as the end to which its precepts
must finally conduce. As a science which tries to explain
morality it refers everything back to this same object
conceived as ultimate self-explaining matter of fact. Thus
the conformity of the practical and the rational sides of
the moral life is from first to last secured, Both stand or
fall together. Present worth and ideal worth, Validity as
felt and actively sought after and Validity as contemplated
by reflection, coincide at the apex of a system which finds
its architectonic principle in the intuition of moral goodness
as good, and as good for no other reason than that it is
itself.
§ 36. " But," says the critic of Validity, by this time (let
us hope) driven to his last ditch, " Ethics after all has its
limits. It is not life. Much less is it nature. Suppose
I grant you that Ethics as Ethics is essentially normative.
Is not normativeness as such, however, ex analogia hominis
magis quam universit A certain form may be helpful,
or even practically indispensable, when you are ' con-
structing ' out of a certain kind of appearance. But
what of the kinds of appearance in relation to which
it does not help ? And, above all, what of Reality ?
Though the microcosm take itself ever so seriously,
is it quite prepared to absorb, or transcend, the macro-
cosm ? "
Well, as to life, regarded as more or less self-organised
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 279
and self-organisable experience, there is surely no
repudiation of the normativeness of Ethics to be feared
from this quarter. Taken at its widest, life (in this sense)
is teleological ; and the theory which seeks to import
method into the work of self- organisation cannot but
shape itself accordingly. As consciously experiencing,
that is, experimenting, beings we take the validity of life
for granted. Life for us may be sweet or stern ; but,
if we ' will to live,' we are committed to the postulate
that, despite all drawbacks, life on the whole is something
good and sufficient ' in itself.' Now, unless the moral
life as such is to count amongst life's drawbacks — a view
we are wont to contradict by shutting up the persons
who hold it in prison or the asylum — it must partake
in the teleological character of the more comprehensive
system. And, as a matter of fact, the place assigned
to morals in such a system by the common opinion is
very high. Indeed, we have already had occasion to
protest against a prevalent notion which would actually
lead to the identification of Ethics with the general
science and art of conscious living, or at all events with
that group of allied normative disciplines which together
set before themselves the ideal of ' the higher life.' In
which ideal the very aspiration of natural science towards
'truth for truth's sake' constitutes an integral element.
If the ' man of science ' is not aware of the fundamental
normativeness of his intellectual interest, and hence of
the object thereto corresponding, it must simply be that
in regard to the higher logic he is as Mons. Jourdain was
in regard to prose, and ' escapes his own notice ' as a
' constructor ' of experience.
As to ' Nature ' and the universe, there would seem
to be prima facie reason for taking a teleological view
of the aggregate of ' mental ' and ' material ' appearances,
and to be prima facie reason against so doing. As
empiricists we do not pretend to the possession of any
a priori clue. We abstract from amongst the manifold
appearances one kind of appearance that for us is,
because it seems, supremely worthy of our interest and
280 R. R. MARETT v
attention ; and we boldly say — ' that is the truth.' The
object of the view we elect to hold is ideal rather than
real because it transcends the me-now — because it has
yet to be fully realised in actual experience, our
experience. If, then, at our own risk we accept the
responsibility of believing that this is both for us and
in itself predominantly a universe in which spirit is
realising itself, and realising itself in part through us, that
is, by means of, and in some sense conditionally on, our
voluntary co-operation, teleology is for us the last word
in Metaphysics no less than in Ethics. Or if not, not.
Meanwhile, as professed experimentalists, let us at any
rate be practical, even to the extent of theorising to
some ultimately practical purpose. If Ethics naturally
takes shape round a notion of ideal moral goodness as
bearing the signs of readability upon its face ; if Ethics,
Logic, Art, Religion, so far as they are ' organised interests '
capable of standing by themselves, display each a similar
fundamental character of normativeness ; and if the
normativeness of one and all is identical in so far as it
insists on the pursuit of the seeming Highest ' for its own
pure sake ' ; then, at all events our teleological, anthro-
pomorphic, personal, rendering of the universe is likely to
react on all these interests with advantage — to con-
tribute something of its own towards a general heighten-
ing and deepening. And what is left outside ? A
few stubborn animal passions, a dim sense of fatal
arbitrary drivenness. And are these poor fossils and
wrecks of time to serve, to the exclusion of maturer
forms of experience, as determinants of the human reason
and will? Shall they — 'must' they — dictate to us a
philosophy of life and nature, whereof the bare theoretic
contemplation renders our whole disposition towards
practice less strenuous, less intense, less susceptible to
the hint of immense possibilities in us and about us ?
" But no," you say. " The effect of materialism on
practice is nothing of the kind. It fires, it exalts
abidingly." — Then we two are made differently. Let us
go our several ways in peace. Perhaps after all, as Uncle
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 281
Toby said to the fly, ' there is room in the world alike
for me and thee.'
VII. Final Suggestions in Favour of a Com-
bined Use of the Two Standpoints in
Empirical Ethics
§ 37. "And what of synthesis?" — says the weary
reader. " At the outset you looked forward to a relative
unification of the two rival principles of ethical explanation.
Nor have you shown, or indeed tried to show, that
mere Validity can suffice us as a standpoint any more
than mere Origin. Besides, the study of origins is an
established industry ; and established industries die hard.
Others ere now have made it pretty hot for naturalism
and evolutionism. But, like Brer Terrapin in the prairie
fire, they display a wonderful ability to 'sit and take
it' Can you not manage, then, to allot them a corner
of their own in your ethical laboratory ? Is there no
specific function, even though it be a subordinate one,
for them to fulfil ? "
Well frankly, as regards naturalism, there can be, from
our point of view, no parleying whatever with it. As a
philosophy it is contemptible. As a mood it is cheerless
and paralysing. And in any case it is always, in preten-
sion at least, a metaphysic, and therefore at once some-
thing more and something less than a method of em-
pirical Ethics.
But, though naturalism as a philosophy cannot by
rights yield us an ethical standpoint, as a mood it can to
some extent do this, the standpoint it favours being that
of a narrow and sordid opportunism. Such an opportunism
puts the objective condition ' this is what I can do ' before
the subjective condition ' this is what I ought to do.' Nay,
its tendency is to neglect the latter altogether as causally
inoperative, as mere ' echo.' Thus suppose it to appear
expedient on grounds of hygiene that extra - nuptial
relations between the sexes should be permitted in times
when early marriage is discouraged by custom, or when
282 R. R. MARETT v
in a monogamous society one sex considerably outnumbers
the other. Opportunism would pay no heed to objections
founded on simple regard for the principle of purity. It
assumes that the normal conscience will sooner or later,
and sooner rather than later, ' come round.' Or suppose
that political economy seem to recommend the suppression
of certain bouches inutiles, say the quiet putting away of
the mentally afflicted or the incurably diseased. Oppor-
tunism would be for carrying out the change in the teeth
of all ' sentimental ' insistence on the value of the
individual human life as such. According to thi's theory,
or rather mood — for the real strength of naturalism
depends, not on its logic, but on the success of its appeal
to the imagination of the unimaginative — the subjective
1 necessity ' of moral principles is little else than a sham.
And what is true of them — so it is urged — is equally true
of moral principle in general. Exaggeration enters into
the very marrow of the moral sense. By asking of us
what otherwise — that is by ' reason ' and ' experience ' —
we might know to be extravagant and impossible, it seeks
to cheat us into a more strenuous performance of our
tasks. But ' noble lies ' are for the sightbound self-
hypnotising masses. The rod of enlightened authority
and empire is a moral scepticism tempered by statistics.
Well, there is no refuting a mood. We can but give
it the cold shoulder. Meanwhile, so far as it pretends to
base itself on ' reason ' and ' experience,' these, if the fore-
going argument is to be trusted, bear witness to precisely
the opposite effect.
§38. With evolutionism however, it is quite otherwise.
Useful work can be found for it to do. If it eschew
metaphysics, and attend to its proper business, the
historical description and explanation of vital function, it
is a weapon in the hands of the moral philosopher only
second in importance to the commission which bids him
use that weapon rightly.
For ultimately, indeed, that is, when rationalised to its
utmost, Ethics, we have decided, must be normative. It
must put Validity before Origin, foretaste before forecast.
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 283
A general standard of evaluation is given by the moral
consciousness in something which ethical thought can but
inadequately designate as spirituality of personal motive
in regard to social conduct. This may to some extent
be susceptible of interpretation from a higher ' level.'
The sympathetic metaphysician may discern therein an
' aspect ' — a specific rendering — of the ideal of spiritual
wholeness, of personal self-realisation, or what not.
Ethically, however, it is just what it is to the moral
intuition. It is a criterion of relative excellence which
the good man feelingly — or, in a broad, but quite legitimate,
sense of the word ' knowledge,' knowingly — has and can
use. Given two or more possible courses of social conduct
involving principles that appear qualitatively different, he
can choose with certainty — moral certainty — between
them, once he has accepted it as the ' maxim of his will ' :
Attend to the spiritualities, and the temporalities may be
trusted to look after themselves.
Alternative courses of seemingly possible social conduct
must, however, be given. Our ethical imperatives must
always be relative to certain preferables. How, then, are
such alternatives given ? By forecast.
Forecast is the anticipation of a certain sort of
consequence. Foretaste as foretaste likewise anticipates
consequences in a sense. But the latter are — that is, are
apprehended as — necessary and assured consequences.
They are consequences in that they have yet to be willed
out from ideality into reality. But such a change, viewed
from the present standpoint of the agent, can affect but
the degree, and not the kind, of the experience they
embody. Whether thought of as ideal, or as realised,
they are good for the moral subject about to act with
one and the same quality of goodness. Forecast, on the
other hand, deals with what for the agent must always
appear as contingent and debatable consequences — with
this or that means as opposed to the end. It has to
guarantee though always doubtfully yet as best it can the
actual possibility of the ethically preferable course of
conduct, before mere wish can ripen into resolve. The
284 R. R. MARETT v
good man must always seek to do that which, in the
broadest sense of the phrase, is ' best under the circum-
stances.' An Ethics that is empirically normative cannot
but regard this as the only intelligible ' best.' The
general subjective necessity 'this is what I ought to do,'
though prior in the logic of Ethics, that is, prior for us as
beings who have to build on the ' fact ' of our moral
freedom, can have neither meaning nor function apart
from the general objective ratification ' this is what I can
do.' To forecast which latter condition as rightly as may
be possible constitutes an important branch of the work
of such an evolutionism as concerns itself with the com-
parative history of man's attempts to adapt himself to
his environment.
§39- Meanwhile the present essay does not profess to
be a methodology of Ethics, but at most to serve in some
sort as an introduction thereto. It will suffice, therefore,
if we indicate quite broadly how Validity and Origin,
intuitionism and evolutionism, as distinct principles and
methods operating in conjunction, are to import logical
system into Ethics in the highest attainable degree.
This, then, at least is plain — that Ethics cannot be
organised on the model of a despot's court, the ' ought '
sitting enthroned upon a dais, whilst below and respect-
fully remote stands this and that attendant 'can.' An
Ethics that bases itself on experience — as we under-
stand experience — cannot afford to show the slightest
sympathy with the dualistic view that disjoins the a priori
from the a posteriori. On the contrary, it must seek to
explain and justify the experience of the normal moral
subject, who does somehow manage to combine the affirma-
tion of an architectonic end with a due consideration for
practicable ways and means. Thus the general body of
ethical doctrine must present as free and full as possible a
commingling of what we have for the sake of clearness
distinguished as the ' subjective ' and ' objective ' elements
or determinants. If ' ought ' and ' can ' are not to be made
to join hands and work together for a common object
there is an end of Ethics. But Ethics is, and will not be
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 285
ended, so long as there are thinkers who are content to
try to make the best of what they have got, and to
observe experience from within instead of raising futile
questions as to what it would look like could one get
outside.
Now the strength of a science is rightly held to reside
in its axiomata media. And so we may say that it is by
its power of firmly establishing its secondary principles
that the soundness of ethical method is to be tried and
tested. How, then, are ' ought ' and ' can ' — the subjective
and objective factors — to co-operate to produce such
secondary principles ? How, for instance, is a catalogue
raisonne of particular virtues to be drawn up that shall
without inconsistency present them as embodiments of
the end and yet likewise as generalised possibilities of
conduct?
By a compromise, we answer — a compromise based
on a clear recognition of their mutual relativeness and
dependency ; though even so the best of the bargain, in
the shape of an appreciable balance of authoritativeness,
cannot but fall to ' ought ' as against ' can ' — to Validity
as against Origin. Each left to itself would initiate and
pursue a method of its own, Validity an analytic, deduc-
tive, and Origin a comparative, inductive, method. But
each, unsupported and uncontrolled by the other, is bound,
as it seems at least to the empiricist, to stultify itself by
onesidedness and extravagance, Validity by engendering
mere quixotism, and Origin mere opportunism. Hence,
though each may occupy its own sanctum in the ethical
laboratory, employing groups of specialists who have no
time to interest themselves in the details of one another's
work, the true and scientific account of the laws and
principles of Ethics must always take the form of a joint
report subscribed to by the heads of both departments.
Nay, it were obviously best that the minutest specialist
on either side, in order to avoid becoming the slave —
the ' ideopath,' so to speak — of his chosen method, should
be generally acquainted with the relations of his working
assumptions to those of the other branch, that is, with
286 R. R. MARETT v
the methodology of Ethics as a whole, and thus be able
in a broad way to make the ' professional equation ' as he
goes.
Analytic Ethics prevails over Comparative Ethics
simply by reason of its greater affirmativeness both as art
and science. And its right to be the more affirmative is
grounded on the ' fact ' that for the actual moral subject of
to-day, both when he is acting, and when in his theoretical
mood he asks himself, ' Is this really and truly so for me
as a typical moral subject trying to understand himself
and his position,' the nature of moral principle is more
closely bound up with the subjective, ' intersubjective,'
if you will, since typical, but still subjective, than with
the objective, element therein contained. In other words,
the ' laws ' of Ethics ultimately are, in their theoretical no
less than in their practical aspect, authoritative pro-
nouncements rather than observed uniformities. Doubt-
less the conditions which determine the nature of morality
as a product are phenomenally of two kinds. There
are determinations from within morality itself, and there
are determinations from without. But the one kind
which consists in the evaluatory selections of a will moved
by the intuition of morality as worth realising in itself
and for itself (that is, apart from any consequence save
itself) appears to Empirical Psychology, in its introspective
and historical capacities taken together, to cause more,
and to explain more, than the other kind, which is com-
posed of whatever influences control and limit the action
of such a will without apparently sharing in its inner guid-
ing purpose. These latter conditions that are ethically
'objective' (in the sense of 'external' — not, of course, in
the metaphysical sense of ' determinate,' which may or
may not be an adequate expression for Nature as a whole)
have doubtless to be reckoned with. The constructive
affirmations of any intuitionism are always open to
criticism on the score of objective impracticability, when
such impracticability is the verdict of a strong induction.
But the impracticabilities of morals are on the whole
internal rather than physical or physiological. It is chiefly
v ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS 287
because we do not will, and do not will to will, the seem-
ing Highest strongly enough, not because we otherwise
cannot, that — as a matter of ' fact ' — our characters and
conduct are found morally wanting. Broadly speaking
in regard to the very general policies of action repre-
sented by the particular virtues, we can, and mostly do,
realise them all in some degree. Ethically, however, the
important question we have to ask ourselves is : How
can we do so in the highest degree — that is, so as to
give each virtue that place in the system of our life
which its relative value warrants ? Thus I can practice
nationalism and I can practice humanitarianism. Prob-
ably the ' best under the circumstances ' permits of
both. But which for the general purposes of my moral
self-realisation is to count for more ? When all has been
said on both sides, it is to Validity rather than to Origin
— to intuitionism rather than to evolutionary utilitarianism
— that the good man will go for the ' rational ' solution.
§ 40. We have sought to keep true to empiricism. If
our conclusions favour a reflective and critical intuitionism,
at least they are conclusions that profess to be founded
on simple matter of 'fact.' The ground on which we
take our stand is wholly psychological. We allege no
more than a psychological, and hence phenomenological,
1 ought.' The real ' ought ' is for your Will. We (at a
certain personal risk of our own — for example, the risk
of being thought illogical or foolish) have selected a
certain view of moral experience because it seems to be
for man (as we seem to know him both in ourselves and
otherwise) supremely worthy of attention at the ' level '
of Ethics. You must attend to it at your own personal
risk. If, by attending to it rather than to anything else
in pari materia, you reach a Better (which is not
necessarily a physical or biological Better, for all that
it turns out to be not incompatible with physical and
biological conditions!), then what the pair of us believe
is true — true, at any rate, until something even truer
emerges from the ' visible darkness ' that is both in us
and about us.
VI
ART AND PERSONALITY1
By Henry Sturt
I. Scope and Method
i. Art is a characteristic function of personality.
2. Artistic consciousness should be studied in its creative rather than its
receptive form,
3. and in artists that are familiar rather than those that are remote.
II. The Solidarity of the Higher Life
4. An artist's most important quality is enthusiasm,
5. which must be directed upon objects external to himself;
6. these being men, or things with human qualities.
7. The personal element is traceable even in (a) architecture,
8. {i) nature-painting,
9. and (c) music.
10. Though art implies emotion, it is not to be defined as the expression of
emotion, either self-regarding,
11. or reflective.
12. Though art has to do with pleasure, it is not to be defined as a form of
pleasure-seeking, either coarse or refined.
13. Art is not self-reduplication, though it is self-expression.
14. Unselfish appreciation of persons is the mainspring of knowledge and
morality also, though both are specifically distinct from art ;
15. it unifies our higher life both on its subjective and its objective side ;
and is a strong vital experience.
III. The Separateness of Art
16. Art is separate from morality and knowledge formally
17. and materially, (a) as a subjective experience,
18. {f>) in regard to the objects for which it is felt, which are persons.
19. The separateness of art is obscured by the transference of artistic terms
and forms to what is outside art.
20. Knowledge and morality are in like manner separate.
21. It is not a vicious circle to define art as the appreciation of art in others.
22. The separateness of our higher interests may be transcended.
1 An abridgement of an earlier draft of this essay is printed in the Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, N.S. vol. i.
288
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 289
IV. Artistic Valuation
23. The questions connected with artistic valuation are (a) what is valued,
(b) by whom, (c) for whom, (d) on what ground, (e) with what authority.
24. (a) What is valued is the work as manifesting consciousness, which must
be of the artistic kind.
25. (b) It is the artist, primarily, who values ; secondarily, the critic.
26. (c) It is the artist, primarily, for whom the work has value ; but it is
essential that he should wish others to enjoy it.
27. (d) The ground of the valuation is an immediate personal experience.
28. This is intuitionism, but the intuition it affirms (a) is not merely intel-
lectual, (ft) is connected with all the rest of our personal and social
life, (y) is flexible ;
29. and its method is empirical, though mere empiricism can never do
justice to the personal affirmation in artistic judgments.
30. (e) Not all erroneous artistic valuations have a definite principle to
oppose to us ;
3 1 . but the need of a superhuman authority to back the true valuation is felt
(a) in combating decadents who deny the value of life,
32. (ft) in fighting for artistic progress.
33. I agree with popular opinion in affirming the right of private judgment ;
34. disagree in denying the accessibility of an objective criterion.
I. Scope and Method
§ 1. THOUGH English literature is rich in writings on art
— Ruskin alone would redeem us from poverty — we have
not much that treats of it in a purely speculative way.
Ruskin's glowing pages are full of artistic truths, truths of
wide sweep and truths of finest detail ; but he never stood
away and viewed the subject as a whole from a detached
position. He gives us plenty of philosophic material, but
no philosophy of art.
The object of the present essay is to study artistic
experience philosophically ; above all, to contribute to the
knowledge of personality by considering in very general
terms what it is and does in the sphere of art. Such an
investigation is in any case worth making, and especially
so if we believe that art is not only a function, but a
characteristic function, of personality ; that is, a function
parallel in its nature to the functions we call morality and
knowledge. I think that careful study would convince us
that art is not a by-path or anomalous province ; but
that the human spirit exhibits the unity of its nature
throughout its experiences, artistic, moral, and epistemonic.
U
29o HENRY STURT
VI
Granted this, the study of art must throw great light upon
the other functions. Particularly in regard to ethics it is
hardly too much to say that any one who is beset by
false notions about art will never interpret moral
experience truly.
This is how, in the first instance, I would justify my
title " Art and Personality." The results of the argument
will justify it further. We shall see, firstly, that the
supreme artistic interest, the mainspring of artistic cona-
tion, is an affectionate admiration for human persons ;
secondly that art illustrates both the solidarity and the
separateness of the main elements of our personal life ;
thirdly, that artistic value is, for us, entirely an affirmation
of personal experience. Lastly, the title of the essay is
meant to indicate the limitations of its scope, which
neglects the social and historical sides of art. Another
essay on " Art and Society " might well be written
without overlapping the present one. And a glance of
the chapter-headings of Dr. Hirn's excellent Origins of
Art will show how wide a field of history I leave
untouched. In art-philosophy, as in ethics, we can learn
much by studying individuals as we meet them in daily
life, abstracting temporarily from their historical ante-
cedents and social medium.
S 2. Of the persons who may distinctively be termed
artistic there are two classes, artists and connoisseurs.
Which of the two shall we elect to study as the type
of artistic experience ? I think undoubtedly the former.
Here, at least, I have the support of Dr. Bosanquet, who
argues that in such theorising we should take the attitude
of " the mind of the maker." 1 Were we discussing
science instead of art there would hardly be need of
arguments to establish this point. What should we think
of the theorist who took as his type of the scientific mind,
not the explorer and creator, but the docile student ; or
quoted as the typical philosopher, not Aristotle, but
Simplicius ? In morals the point becomes so obvious that
it needs an effort to realise the force of the parallel.
1 " On the Nature of .-Esthetic Emotion," in Mind for April, 1894, p. 155.
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 291
There the connoisseur is one who says " video meliora
proboque " ; but such is not the man on whom we base
our theory of virtue.
We get the same result from introspection. That
definite and well-known experience which we call artistic
comes to us more fully in making a work of our own than
in contemplating another man's. It would be strange
were the case otherwise. Through all the range of our
life our feelings are keenest when we are actualising them.
Aristotle was right with his ivepyeiq ecrfiev — " it is in the
exercise of our faculties that our existence lies." Keenly
as we may feel in looking passively at a sunset, keenly as
we may enjoy the sunset in the " Fighting T£meraire,"
we might be sure that if we painted the sunset we should
have a feeling of the distinctively artistic kind far more
rich and keen.
Yet, in ordinary discussions, the standpoint assumed
is almost always that of the receptive side ; and this
accounts for nine-tenths of the mistakes in art-philosophy.
One reason for assuming this standpoint is obvious.
Connoisseurs are many and artists are few, and there
is always a temptation to confuse the " average " with
the " typical." But there is perhaps a more philosophical
reason which we shall appreciate if we consider how the
experience of the looker-on compares with that of the
artist. The former is, so to speak, a creator at second-
hand. Turner, in painting the T^meraire, had the
creative experience at first-hand ; the intelligent admirer,
on the suggestion of the picture, goes through part of
what the painter felt. But, though the spectator's feeling^
is feebler, it is purer. He is not troubled, like the artist^
by difficulties of technique. The popular preference for
the spectator's standpoint is instructive, if it shows us
that, to get to the essentials of art, we must think away
the merely technical element in the artist's experience.
The mention of technique leads on to a further
definition of my standpoint. It will have been noticed
that I have spoken more of the artist's mind than of the
work which he produces. It is mental facts that will
292 HENRY STURT
VI
mainly be kept in view in the following pages. The
" art " which I propose to study in connection with
personality is the direct expression of the consciousness
of the artist.
S 3. Of course it is in his works principally that the
artist's consciousness is revealed. But the observer must
use all helps to get at the underlying consciousness. He
must attend to what artists say about their work, and to
what they like or dislike in others. And thus, for his
investigations, no artists are so useful as those of whom
he can get personal knowledge. If he does not under-
stand the artists of his own day, the painters who paint
familiar beauties, the poets who treat the current themes
of vital interest, the musicians who interpret the emotions
of contemporary society, we shall not get much help from
artists of a different age and clime.
Neglect of these considerations accounts largely for
the unreality of so many cultured discussions on art.
An anecdote will illustrate my meaning. Not long ago
I heard a distinguished professor, who has never done
anything manual in his life, begin an art discussion with
the words " When I look at a Greek statue ." This
little phrase approves by implication many errors that
we should shun. " I look " implies the receptive attitude ;
that point has been dealt with. " Greek " is our present
concern. How can an Englishman expect to reach the
truth about art by beginning with the artistic conscious-
ness of Greeks twenty-five centuries away ? " Statue "
is hardly less mistaken. Statuary is an art-form which
does not appeal strongly to our age and country. So long
as our climate and habits remain what they are, it will
never emerge from its secondary position. The Greeks,
on the other hand, were always practising naked in the
palaestra. Their work shows that they cared as much
for the figure as the face. But to Englishmen the face
is nearly everything, except to the few who have studied
from the nude, which my professor had certainly never
done. So, instead of his conventional classicality, the
professor should have said : " When an English sculptor
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 293
models a face." Even then he was wrong in not
beginning with the art he practised, literature.
II. The Solidarity of the Higher Life
§ 4. Of all the qualities that go to make a true artist,
the most important is enthusiasm. The word itself has
had a chequered history. We all know of the early
Victorian archbishop who addressed a band of outgoing
missionaries with the words, "Above all, avoid enthusiasm."
He was doubtless using the word in its older sense of
that neurotic exaltation, so notorious in later days among
American revivalists,1 which is often the dangerous
enemy of reason and morality. But the enthusiasm I
mean is just that rational fervour which is essential to
the most perfect forms of intellectual and moral
experience.
The repressing and ignoring of enthusiasm was the
worst feature of the eighteenth century. Its recognition
is the most hopeful sign for the century just begun.
" Enthusiastic " is now almost a customary epithet for
artists, like " gallant " for soldiers. Even the ordinary
Britisher knows that without enthusiasm, or unselfish
devotion to art for its own beauty, no artist, however
skilful, can be noble ; and that with it the least skilful
can never be contemptible. The man of skill and no
devotion he despises as a manufacturer.
Using, as I do, enthusiasm in quite a common sense,
I have no fear that it will be seriously misunderstood.
But it is worth while to make its meaning plainer by
comparing it with some kindred terms. ' Admiration '
and ' unselfish appreciation ' do not express the active
working fervour of the enthusiast. Admiration, more-
over, is too much limited to our feeling for men ; it
would hardly express our feeling for a cause. ' Devotion '
is nearly synonymous ; but it has religious or, at least,
exalted associations which are not relevant to our
1 Cf. B. Sidis, Psychology of Suggestion, chap, xxxiii. , entitled "American
Mental Epidemics."
294 HENRY STURT
VI
present meaning. But all these terms share with
enthusiasm the connotation of a self-forgetful absorption
in a pursuit which is valued, not because it brings
pleasure or profit or renown, but because it is intrinsically
precious and noble.
The quality of enthusiasm belongs not to art only, but
also to the other activities, knowledge and morality, which
go with art to make up our higher life. The sphere of
the higher life might in fact be described as that in which
enthusiasm is possible. A cool propriety, a cool curiosity
never sufficed to make a saint or scientific genius. Art,
knowledge, and morality have each of them intrinsic value,
a value which, as we shall see in the last section of this
essay, is vouched for, primarily, by the affirmation of the
personal self. Enthusiasm is the affirmation of intrinsic
values on its passionate side.
§ 5. We have so far, by an unreal though necessary
abstraction, considered enthusiasm subjectively, or as an
affection of the acting self. None the less, it is essential
to enthusiasm that it should be directed upon an object
outside the acting self. It is possible, indeed frequent,
for a man to view himself with pride, but not with
enthusiasm. In morals a man cannot turn from thinking
admiringly of another's virtue to thinking of his own with
the same admiration. The transition from the not-self to
the self involves an essential change of feeling. So it is
with the artistic form of enthusiasm. Art is the effort
to represent objects which the artist thinks beautiful, or,
at least, deserving of sympathetic interest. But they
must be objects which are not merely part of the agent's
own self. This would probably be admitted as a rule,
but there are cases on the boundary which might cause
difficulty. In literature there is the case of autobiography.
Can a man relate his own adventures and delineate his
own character with the same artistic spirit that he can
devote to another man's ? I think not. An autobiography
may be excellent as a historical record or as a human
document, like Benvenuto Cellini's ; but it is a mistake
for the writer to try to make it a work of art, except in
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 295
the subordinate sense of taking pains with the arrangement
and style. Compare Thackeray's Barry Lyndon with a
book which perhaps suggested to him the idea of a
romance of scoundrelism, Casanova's Memoirs. One is
art, the other egoism.
In painting there is the similar case of the artist who
paints his own portrait. Here an objective attitude is
less difficult because the matter represented is not so
central to the acting self. It is possible for a man to be
interested in his physical appearance, not because it is his,
but because it is human. Still, there are many dangers
in self-portraiture. In Florence there is a famous gallery
reserved for portraits of artists by their own hands ; and
the most successful are those in which the artists have
looked at their own faces in a detached impersonal way
as interesting human lineaments, not unsuggestive of
human peculiarities and failings.
§ 6. To learn what are the objects of artistic interest
we must go to the arts ; and, to begin with, not to the
most rudimentary, but to the most perfect of them. This,
men have agreed, is poetry. For there is most in it on
the whole, and to excel requires the highest powers. We
have only to take down from our shelves any of the great
poets, from Homer to Tennyson, to assure ourselves that
their supreme interest is Man. Turn over their pages
and you will find that human strength and beauty, love
and hope, pain and sorrow, effort and adventure, art and
skill are the substance of their song. In the preface to
Sordello Browning says, " My stress lay on the incidents
in the development of a soul ; little else is worth study."
On the whole, that is true.
A sympathetic interest in men is the mainspring even
of that rare and difficult form, the poetry of pessimism.
Pure pessimism, which is the same as pure misanthropy,
is seldom met with and is artistically worthless. The
only sort that is tolerable gives the impression that man
is a creature possessing many noble qualities, but basely
tormented by cruel circumstance.
So with the satirist. Juvenal and Swift would be
296 HENRY STURT vi
execrable if we did not feel that their fury against men
is really a fury that men are not better. It is a cry for
reform cloked as a curse.
Nature, animate and inanimate, claims the poet's
interest in a less degree. In many cases, he cares for
it only as a background to human life. Where Nature
is an object of independent interest it is viewed, as it
were, sub specie humanitatis. Even in the nature that
is farthest from us, the poet sees human powers and
attributes ; grace in flowers, majesty in mountains, purity
in air and sky.
§ 7. There are some branches of art in which my
thesis that artistic interest is interest in psychic life,
human or quasi -human, may be sustained with com-
parative ease. These are poetry, portrait -painting, and
portrait -sculpture. They may therefore be left aside,
and we will turn to other cases where, for various reasons,
the principle is less obvious. Such a case is architecture,
the interest of which I will try to analyse in detail. It is
a case where we are forced to take the spectator's stand-
point rather than the artist's. For there is usually a good
deal more artistic interest in a noble building than its
builder put there.
A considerable piece of architecture, one of our
cathedrals for example, stands midway between the
things of artistic value that are purely natural and those
which, like a painting, are purely artificial. We never
forget that human hands built it ; and yet from its huge
bulk, its assimilation by weathering to the visible quality
of rock and cliff, and the dependence of its structural
permanency on the crude natural strength and weight
of stone and timber, it takes a place in our thought
among the main features of its landscape. Thus its
interest has many sides, which it is worth while to
distinguish for the sake of showing how they are related
to humanity.
First, there is the interest of human association.
English people are worshipping in the building ; great and
good men of the past have served and worshipped there.
VI
ART AND PERSONALITY 297
Secondly, there is the interest of workmanship. The
architect and sculptor have put their thought into its
planning and decoration. These two interests are directly
personal.
Thirdly, there is the interest of nationality. The
building informs us not only of the craftsman's conscious-
ness, but of the nation's. The religious and secular
ideals of medieval England, its hopes and fears, its view
of Nature and of Man, its outlook upon the time and its
conceptions of a future life were expressed more
adequately in churches than in any other form.
Fourthly, there is the interest of organic character.
Let us consider what we mean by that hard -worked
philosophic term " organism." In part we only mean
that the thing denoted has life, whatever the qualities
of life may be. This meaning, obviously, is not in
question here. But also we mean that the thing
possesses a definite meaning and purpose which pervades
the parts, so that they are instrumental or "organic" to
it. The more thorough the pervasion of the meaning,
and the more elaborately the parts are shaped to express
it, the more organic the organism. To us the human
body, the instrument of personal life, is the supreme
organism, because the meaning which it subserves is to
us supreme. And thus we tend to view as quasi-personal
every totality which subserves meaning in a way
analogous to the human body. So it is with the
cathedral ; and with every building that has a worthy
meaning. Every material structure which is an object
of our unselfish interest, we tend to regard as possessing
an almost human individuality. That is why the sailor
speaks of his ship as " she." That also is why we often
resent alterations in a favourite building which a stranger
would recognise as improvements.
Fifthly, there is the interest of the vitality of the
parts. To a sympathetic vision the stones and beams
of the cathedral are severally instinct with life. The
strong straight pillars sustain the upper fabric with an air
of well-girt purpose ; the arches spring ; the timbers knit
298 HENRY STURT
VI
the roof ; the buttresses thrust sturdily against the
pressure of the roof ; the spire soars into the sky. The
eye instinctively interprets these dead mechanic things
in terms of living power ; and those forms are grateful
to it which assist its instinctive interpretation.1
The foregoing enumeration of aspects may not be
exhaustive. That is immaterial. Distinction of the
aspects of the artistic interest is less important than
apprehension of its unifying principle, which is interest
in a vital whole. The fourth and fifth aspects, which
imply each other, are the fundamental ones. The two
first are but enhancements. They cannot be mechanically
added to the core of interest, but must belong organically.
Take the first — association. The fact that Napoleon had
worshipped, or professed to worship, in a building could
lend it but an adventitious interest. To enhance its
artistic value, we should need the memory of some
God-fearing warrior, like Cromwell.
§ 8. I have now to establish my position in regard
to nature-painting, including under that term the painting
of animals, still-life, and landscape. In regard to the first
of these, the matter needs little argument. It is easy \
to see that what we value in the representation of
animals are excellences akin to human. The danger is
that we fall into the opposite error and suppose that we
care for animals, not as beasts, but as men in beasts'
clothing. Landseer illustrates both the better and the
worse possibilities of the animal -painter. Sometimes
his dogs are mere human caricatures. His best picture,
the Shepherd's Chief Mourner, exemplifies the two con-
ditions of success. It is full of the purest appreciation
of dog-nature as such ; and it teaches us how to admire
in beasts a virtue akin to the highest in man.
Still -life and landscape go very closely together, so
that nearly all that applies to the latter applies to the
former. As landscape is far the more important, I reserve
the main argument for it. There is only one element
1 Cf. the excellent analysis of the artistic quality of a Doric column by T.
Lipps, Raumiisthetik, chaps, i. and ii.
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 299
which is more prominent in still-life. In the minute
study of flowers and leaves, for example, we have an
overpowering impression of looking into the work of an
artificer of the subtlest taste and inexhaustible resource
and skill. This is not the wire-drawn fancy of an
abstract thinker, but what occurs to the mind of the
straightforward sympathetic observer — " even Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." An
equal impression of subtlety and power is got from the
lines and tints of scenery, such as that of mountains.
But there the sense of contact with an artificing conscious-
ness is weaker ; because, while man with stone and
metal can imitate the lily, mountains are beyond him.
Finally, then, of landscape, which has a claim to
fuller notice as having only reached maturity in our own
time. It is evident that no simple explanation of it
will suffice. A taste of ours that was weak in the
contemporaries of Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson must be
part of our latest gain in subtlety and power.
To put it broadly, the modern taste for landscape-
painting is based on sympathy with the life of Nature,
the same sympathy which drives many a traveller to
roam through strange and lonely places of the earth.
Here is a passage from that type of the wandering
nature-lover, George Kingsley, which is an example how
some men feel about islands and forests. " No landscape
seems perfect to my eyes unless they can see therein
a bit of the blue water — therefore I love an island. I
love the sigh and the sough of the wind in the black pine
forests of Germany ; I love the swish of the Northern
birch-trees in the fresh odorous early morning, when the
gale has just gone by, and the wet is sweeping in little
glittering showers off their lissom branches ; I love the
creak and groan and roar of the great oaks in a storm ;
and I love the lazy whispering murmur of the light green
limes in the lazy golden summer afternoon ; but, above
all the sounds of Nature, I love the voices of the sea, for
they speak to me in more varied tones, and I know that
they tell me more, though I know not what they tell me,
300 HENRY STURT
VI
than the voices of a million sibilant leaves — therefore
I love an island."1 What the landscapist does is to
translate this sort of feeling into visual form.
Though this is the foundation of landscape -interest,
the influence of association is not small. Both the
main interest and this auxiliary have been magnificently-
set forth by Ruskin. " Among the hours of his life to
which the writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as
having been marked by more than ordinary fulness of
joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some
years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses
of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above
the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot
■which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness,
of the Alps, where there is a sense of a great power
beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep
and majestic concord in the rise of the long, low lines of
piny hills ; the first utterance of those mighty mountain
symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly
broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their
strength is as yet restrained, and the far-reaching ridges
of pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long
and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from
some far-off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness
pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces
and the stern expression of the central ranges are alike
withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of
ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splintered
heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forests ; no
pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and change-
ful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy, by eddy,
the clear green streams wind along their well-known
beds ; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed
pines, there spring up, year by year, such company of
joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the
blessings of the earth. It was springtime, too ; and
all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love ;
there was room enough for all, but they crushed their
1 Notes on Sport arid Travel, p. 60.
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 301
leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be
nearer each other. There was the wood-anemone, star
after star, closing every now and then into nebulae ; and
there was the oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal pro-
cessions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts
in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy
snow, and touched with ivy on the edges — ivy as light
and lovely as the vine ; and, ever and anon, a blue gush
of violets, and cowslip bells in sunny places ; and in
the more open ground, the vetch and comfrey, and
mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala
Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or two,
all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm,
amber-coloured moss. I came out presently on the edge
of the ravine : the solemn murmur of its waters rose
suddenly from beneath, mixed with the singing of the
thrushes among the pine boughs ; and, on the opposite
side of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey
cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off
their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and
with the shadows of the pines flickering upon his plumage
from above ; but with a fall of a hundred fathoms under
his breast, and the curling pools of the green river gliding
and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam globes
moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to^
conceive a scene less dependent upon any other interest
than that of its own secluded and serious beauty ; but
the writer well remembers the sudden blankness and
chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in
order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impres-
siveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some
aboriginal forest of the New Continent. The flowers
in an instant lost their light ; the river its music ; ! the
hills became oppressively desolate ; a heaviness in the
boughs of the darkened forest showed how much 01
their former power had been dependent upon a life which
was not theirs, how much of the glory of the imperishable,
or continually renewed, creation is reflected from things
1 Yet not all their light, nor all its music, as Ruskin admits in a note.
;o2 HENRY STURT
VI
more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing.
Those ever-springing flowers, and ever-flowing streams
had been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance,
valour, and virtue ; and the crests of the sable hills that
rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship,
because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron
wall of Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson." 1
After George Kingsley and Ruskin it is perhaps
superfluous to labour my main point further. (l will take
these extracts as proving that the nature-lover does not
think of nature as merely material, but loves it as
possessing a quasi-personal life. >
§ 9. Music could hardly be discussed adequately till
after the consideration of the rival theory that art is the
expression of emotion, a theory which finds its strongest
illustrations in music. But the general application of
my view in regard to music may be indicated now.
We have in music to make a distinction which has
not been necessary in the other arts, that between
interpretation and composition. Each musical perform-
ance is, like an actor's interpretation of his part, a sort
of re-creation by the performer. It is here that most
of the enthusiasm of music is found, and here that it is
most directly intelligible. For to make a great musical
work live again in sound with all its wealth of human
feeling and ingenuity, is a task to stimulate interest to
the highest. But what we are mainly concerned with,
according to our standpoint, is the mind of the composer,
and we must determine in what sense the composer can
be said to be moved by interest in personal life.
According to general agreement, music is the most
spontaneous of the arts. A tune springs up within the
composer's mind, he cannot tell why or how. He cannot
usually say more than that it " comes to him." But if
music remained on this level of mere spontaneous
expression, we should never get anything more significant
artistically than thoughtless whistling. There must be
added serious effort and application. Part of the effort
1 Seveii Lamps of Architecture, p. 162.
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 303
may be due to any of the lower motives which induce
men to exert themselves. But part of it, I venture to
say, comes from enthusiasm for that beautiful world of
sound which is man's mysterious and delightful heritage ;
and a still greater part from interest in the varieties of
emotional thought which music is fitted to convey.
How the emotional thought in good music may be
interpreted, is to be learnt from the analyses which are
common in musical literature. Good examples are
Spitta's analyses of the Wohltemperiertes Clavier in his
Life of Bach, and Wagner's appreciations of Beethoven
in his Art-Work of the Future. By these eminent writers
the sentiment of Bach's and Beethoven's music is
interpreted in a great, almost heroic, way. But I will
content myself with a simple illustration. Most amateurs
know Heine's cycle of songs called DicJiterliebe, set to
music by Schumann. The first song, " Im wunderschonen
Monat Mai," is a beautiful expression of happy love ; a
later song, " Ich grolle nicht," a magnificent expression of
a jilted lover's fury and despair. Now, there is no reason
to think that Schumann was actually convulsed by these
rapturous or bitter emotions when he was writing the
songs, any more than if he had treated the incidents by
painting. But there can be no doubt that he was
strongly interested in them. Man was to him worthy
of deeply sympathetic study, and his emotions, bright or
sombre, well worth the utmost effort of the musician to
enshrine in melody.
§10. The narrow limits of an essay will not permit
the review even of the more important of the rival
theories of the essential nature of artistic interest. But
there are two at least which should be noticed, partly
for their intrinsic importance, partly because the discussion
of them will throw fresh light upon the position just laid
down. The first of these theories, or classes of theory,
connects art with emotion ; the second with pleasure.
It is true, of course, that art implies emotion ; every
vital action does so in more or less degree, and art more
than most. For, firstly, art is not the main business of
304 HENRY STURT
VI
life, but, like play, an indulgence out of our superfluity.
t\nd therefore we are not fully fitted to produce or enjoy
.rt save when pleasurable emotion raises the tide of vital
eeling above its normal force. Secondly, the object
of artistic representation must awaken in us some kind
of emotion, bright or sombre. Otherwise it would be
one of those neutral uninteresting things which no one
cares to put into art. This we may call the present
emotional interest of the artistic object. And, thirdly,
the object has usually a remembered emotional interest.
The poet who writes drinking songs is usually one who has
had immediate personal acquaintance with the pleasures
of wine. It is generally admitted that a wide practical
experience of *• life is a necessary part of the equipment of
the literary artist. But all this is far from justifying what
is perhaps the dominant theory of art just now, that art
is definable as the expression of emotion.
One form of the theory, a coarse, uncritical form, may
be termed the Byronic fallacy. This fallacy assumes that
any one who is full of turbid feeling about himself is, so
far, qualified to be some sort of artist ; by preference, a
poet. One could hardly maintain that Byron himself held
this view, even at the epoch when he began to write Childe
Harold ; but it seems to have been current in the early
Victorian period among a certain class of his admirers.
" Demetrius Wiggle, sir, is the slave of passion," says the
friend of a Byronesque young man -about -town in one
of Thackeray's books. But, in reality, to feel deeply
miserable and discontented, to be in a turmoil of love
or hate or ambition, is, so far as these feelings are self-
regarding mental disturbances, not a help, but a hindrance
to poetry.
§ ii. Dr. Bosanquet's emotive theory of art1 is of
course much more refined and philosophic than the
foregoing. At first, we must admit, there does not seem
to be much difference. He says : " I suggest as the
most fundamental and universal feature, from which all
the common characteristics of aesthetic emotion may be
1 " On the Nature of ^Esthetic Emotion " already quoted.
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 305
deduced, the simple fact that it is expressed." Surely,
we must object, this is far too sweeping. At this rate,
Achilles expressing emotion by sulking in his tent or
dragging Hector by the heels was an artist. And indeed
we find presently that the object through which the
emotion is expressed is very important ; this object
must be "a presentation more or less individual." Dr.
Bosanquet adopts, as expressing his own view, Aristotle's
analysis of tragedy, interpreted by Lessing and Bernays.
" There is a form of art called Tragedy which produces
pleasure by means of two painful emotions, pity and
fear. How this is possible is a problem that answers
itself when we consider the conditions of artistic expres-
sion or representation. By a typical portrayal of human
life in some story that forms an individual whole, the
feelings in question are divested of their personal reference,
and acquire a content drawn from what is serious and
noteworthy in humanity, and thus alone, it seems clearly
to be Aristotle's view, can their quintessence be fully
uttered and drawn out and find its pleasurable discharge
free from morbid elements of mere shock and personal
sensibility. The connection of pity and fear, which is the
centre of his doctrine, really indicates that fear, for art,
is a fear idealised by expression or objective embodiment,
while free utterance is not aided but lamed and obstructed
by any intrusion of the dumb shock of personal terror.
Thus then, and thus alone, can fear be made an aesthetic
emotion, a source of artistic enjoyment or the pleasure
of tragedy. It is not, and this is a fundamental point,
it is not merely that the emotion is 'refined,' in the
sense that its bodily resonance is rendered less intense.
A modified resonance will attend a modified emotion,
but the intensity of feeling is not a question of principle
in relation to its aesthetic character. The aesthetic
character lies in the dwelling on and drawing out the
feeling, in its fullest reference, by help of a definite
presentation which accents its nature!'
My judgment on Dr. Bosanquet's doctrine as a whole
is that, starting from a principle which is quite wrong, it
x
306 HENRY STURT
VI
works round to a view which is nearly right; his approxi-
mation to truth consisting in his growing recognition of
the importance of objective interest. But let me clear
up the difference between us by considering a particular
tragedy, Richard II, for example. In spite of what
he said earlier in his essay, when combating the hedonist
theory of art, as to the necessity of assuming the attitude
of the " mind of the maker," it is clear that in his account
of tragedy he assumes the attitude of the spectator. If
then, he seems to say, we met Richard II. in the flesh,
discrowned and miserable, we should feel an immediate
shock of painful emotion which would not be art. When
awakened, however, by the dignified scenic representation
of the hapless king these emotions become artistic.
Against this I would urge that as a preliminary we
must assume the attitude of the tragic artist ; for the
feeling of the spectator is only that of the artist at
second-hand. Then we shall see, I think, that what
Shakespeare was interested in, was not the emotions
of pity and fear, but the man Richard II. as delineated
by the Chronicle and vivified and ennobled by his own
poetic imagination. His artistic effort consisted in the
construction of a drama to exhibit the action of the king
under pathetic circumstances. The pity and fear of
the tragic artist and the spectators are secondary to their
interest in the persons of the play. Dr. Bosanquet holds
that the object is important because of the emotions ;
the truth is rather that the emotions are important
because of the object.
The argument of those who hold an emotive theory
of art is strongest in music. There the current opinion
is that the be-all and end-all of the process is the genera-
tion of a succession of emotions. This may approximate
to the truth as regards the hearer, but not as regards the
composer. And how fallacious it is as regards the per-
former may be known by watching good musicians. In-
terested they are, but not emotionally upset, either about
the content of the music or about their own concerns. I
once read an absurd remark that the piano-playing of a
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 307
young girl full of feeling is more artistically satisfying
than that of a more skilful middle-aged performer. This
is the Byronic fallacy again. The playing of young people
is generally cold. They are full of feeling, but it is feeling
about themselves, the sort that has no immediate value
for art. The elder performer is much more likely to play
warmly because the years have trained him in sympathy.
In the other arts I am on ground which is plainly
much stronger. If we watch a good painter working at a
portrait we do not see that he is labouring under strong
emotion ; we are astonished at his technical mastery and
insight into character. The nearer we get to the mere
expression of emotion, as in the antics of boys who have
been promised a holiday, the further we get from art.
§ 12. Pleasure, like emotion, is obviously connected
very closely with art. Art is not a means of self- or race-
preservation, at least in its modern form, whatever anthro-
pologists may tell us of its origin. It would therefore not
be pursued unless it brought pleasure on the whole. But
when this is admitted we are very far from admitting that
art is definable as a kind of pleasure-seeking. Such a
definition would miss out the characteristic feature of the
thing defined. Nor would it be true in many individual
cases. For if we interrogated an artist of the higher class
on the subject we should probably find that, though he
valued his art as infinitely precious, he did not regard it as
an unmixed source of pleasure. In particular, the early
struggles of a serious artist are generally somewhat
distressing both to the sufferer and his near relations.
There is an intense interest in the artistic object, with a
constant failure to embody it in adequate artistic repre-
sentation, resulting in painful fluctuations of spirits and
temper. Hence the sympathy of the St. Ives fisherwife
for the students painting on the foreshore : " What a pity
them poor artises do get so set on it."
Some years ago the hedonist theory of art would have
needed a formal refutation. But it is not held now with
the same tenacity, except by those who insist on solving
all philosophical problems by a reference to biology. No
308 HENRY STURT
VI
biological philosopher ever begins an analysis of human
experience at a higher point than the mammalia. Mr.
Herbert Spencer indeed starts his Data of Ethics with
remarks on infusoria and mollusca. Conformably to this
tendency, what we may term the Bauble-Theory connects
human art with the taste of bower-birds in decorating their
nests with scraps of bright colour, and with the gratification
of the pea-hen in the magnificence of her spouse's tail.
Coming down to man the bauble - theory puts the
beginning of art in the sensuous pleasure which primitive
man feels in bright colours, simple harmonies and allitera-
tive or rhyming jingles of words. The truth is that such
sensuously pleasant things cannot be more than the
material or vehicle of art ; its essence cannot lie in them.
Grant Allen's Physiological ^Esthetics, excellent so far as
it goes, does not really touch the central matter of art at
all. It would be equally possible to write a Physiological
Ethics or Physiological Theory of Knowledge which should
circle round among the external conditions of morality
and knowledge without telling us anything about their
inner reality.
The gist of the matter comes to light when we
consider that only some pleasant objects are suitable for
art, those namely that we can enjoy consistently with
an unselfish interest in their permanence and welfare.
Things that we can only enjoy in a self-regarding way,
such as food, can with difficulty be treated artistically.
A picture of the most sumptuously spread dinner-table
would not be admissible as fine art. The Dutch kitchen-
pictures of fruit, vegetables, and game, those of Mieris
for example, though painted with an unselfish interest
in the forms and colours of the objects, suffer decidedly
from their material associations. It is the pleasures of
sight and hearing that are specially artistic because they
can be enjoyed consistently with self-detached interest
in the object for its own sake, and are not diminished
by being shared with others. Selfish pleasure is the
death of art.
It may have been noticed that I have so far not used
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 309
the current term " aesthetic " in regard to art-experience.
As a synonym for " artistic " I think it highly objection-
able, because it suggests the reduction of the appreciation
of beauty to a form of perception. But it may be
usefully employed to describe those sensations and
pleasures which, in virtue of their refined quality, are
capable of being used for art. If we use aesthetic in this
sense we ought to note that no experience, however
aesthetically refined, rises to the level of art unless it
contains the element of objective interest. I have read
of some character in fiction who invented a scent-organ,
consisting of rows of bottles filled with various scents,
and a mechanical arrangement like a key -board for
opening the stoppers. Was the pleasure got from this
instrument artistic ? Probably not. We cannot of
course be certain that to a man of exceptional disposition
scents may not suggest as much objective content as
musical sounds to other people. But if not, his
experience is merely aesthetic. The scent of a rose has
great artistic value because it enhances an artistic interest
which is already there. Without the flower, the perfume
avails nothing for art.
§ 1 3. Both the emotive and the hedonist theories of
art are supported by a tendency which has had a baleful
influence on speculation, far outside the sphere of art-
philosophy — the tendency of subjective idealism. The
two theories have their common point in the ignoring
of the object and the endeavour to seek the source of
the art-interest entirely within the subject. The same
tendency in another form is countenanced by Hegel
when he raises the question, " What is man's need to
produce works of art?"1 and answers that it is self-
reduplication. As a thinking consciousness, man, says
Hegel, " draws out of himself and makes explicit for
himself, that which he is." " Man as mind reduplicates
himself." " He has the impulse ... to produce himself,
and therein at the same time to recognise himself. This
purpose lie achieves by the modification of external things
1 introduction to Philosophy of Fine Art, trans, by Bosanquet, p/57.
3io HENRY STURT
VI
upon which he impresses the seal of his inner being, and
then finds repeated in them his own characteristics. Man
does this in order as a free subject to strip the outer
world of its stubborn foreignness, and to enjoy in the
shape and fashion of things a mere external reality of
himself." " The universal need for expression in art lies,
therefore, in man's rational impulse to exalt the inner
and outer world into a spiritual consciousness for himself,
yas an object in which he recognises his own self." And
this process is termed a " reduplication of himself."
Professed interpreters of Hegel may question what part
self-reduplication plays in his art-theory as a whole ; but
the foregoing extracts from the Introduction are enough
to bring home to him at least a subjective -idealising
tendency, a tendency which cannot fail to lead astray.
Man needs art because it is a form of objective interest
which is essential to his higher life. The objects are
akin to himself ; but they are not himself, nor does he
try to make them so.
Had Hegel's expressions not been worded so as to
exclude the objective interest of art (as they apparently
do), we might have taken them as merely emphasising
its subjective side which is no less essential than the
objective. For though art is not self-reduplication, it
might fairly be described as self-expression. The artist's
work is always his work ; the appreciation which it
embodies is his appreciation. When the artist has his
completed work, the poem or the picture, before him, he
sees that it embodies not only the beauty which interested
him to make the work, but also his interest in the beauty.
Hegel's preoccupation with the subjective element must
not drive us into exclusive preoccupation with the
objective.
8 14. The admiring appreciation of personal life, which
is the mainspring of art, is the mainspring of knowledge
and morality also. There is not room here to justify the
parallelism in detail ; but it is important to forestall the
notion that art is an anomalous province of our life. Of
both knowledge and morality it may be said that they are
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 311
unselfishly enthusiastic, and that the objects of their
enthusiasm are persons, or things with personal qualities.
The value of enthusiasm in knowledge-seeking is
tolerably well seen now. No one can fail to acknowledge
it who remembers that knowing is, primarily, a creative
process. This last point, truly, is often overlooked.
When knowledge is thought of as a cut-and-dried system
stored in literary warehouses the man of knowledge is
identified with the book-worm. But we should rather
think of the student as an ardent creator ; a maker, not a
manipulator, of theories. Knowledge must be dis-
tinguished from erudition.
Another distinction will vindicate the unselfish character
of knowledge. Many things which people need to know
cannot be dignified by that lofty term, the fluctuations of
the tallow-market for example. Knowledge must be
distinguished from information. A vast mass of
materially useful information about food and clothing and
travelling and so on is only learnt by people because it is
useful, and is forgotten as soon as it becomes useless.
We shall have later (in § 24) to make a similar distinction
between art and manufacture. What really deserves the
name of knowledge is a content which is worth knowing
for itself; a content which fascinates our interest because
of the intellectual force which it embodies.
What the objects are which excite the enthusiasm of
knowledge may be ascertained by the rough-and-ready
method of taking down a volume of the Encyclopedia
Britannica and turning over the leaves. You will find that
the greater part of it, and the most interesting part of it,
deals with mankind's proper study, man. The natural
sciences, which are falsely supposed to be more " scientific "
than the human, are apparently, but only apparently, an
exception. For the universal or generic judgment of
science should be interpreted teleologically, i.e. as
expressing purpose or system in its content. And
purpose and system are conceptions which are fully
intelligible only in reference to the conduct of personal
agents. The interpretation of personal conduct is really
312 HENRY STURT
VI
the most characteristic form of knowlege. In nature we
are interested from a two-fold motive. Where it is alive
it has a claim on us merely from its vitality. Bits of life
are always interesting to a living mind. To the mature
intellect it is interesting because we trace in it subtle far-
reaching design.
On the essential part which the enthusiasm of
humanity plays in moral experience I must be even
briefer ; the more so as I hope to deal with the matter
some day in another place. Perhaps it is enough now to
appeal to the consensus of Christian moralists, who, using
the term charity, make this enthusiasm the basis of
all virtue.
All this must not be understood to mean that art is
identical with, or merely another form of, knowledge and
morality. There is, as just explained, a generic kinship
between them ; but, beyond that, there is a specific
difference which is irreducible and also indefinable. They
are three distinct ways of appreciating our fellow-men.
Taken together, they may be said to constitute our
Higher Life.
§ 1 5. Unselfish appreciation of men, which in its
stronger form is enthusiasm, is thus the quality which gives
to our higher pursuits a common generic character. But,
more than that, it is the interfusion of the same quality
which gives to objects the capacity of being interesting.
For it is certain that interesting objects have a definite
common quality. Enthusiasm does not operate in vacuo,
or attach itself to any object at random. People often
speak as if it did ; but this presupposes an unreal
detachment of the subject from its object, parallel, it may
be remarked, to that liberum arbitrium indifferentice which
so grievously caricatures the true freedom of the will.
Enthusiasm is only felt for appropriate objects.
If we study the persons for whom we feel it reasonable
to be enthusiastic, we shall see that they are themselves
persons of enthusiasm. Fundamentally, enthusiasm is
what differentiates the man from the Yahoo. The student
of our Saxon Heptarchy, who has never read beyond
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 313
Milton's history, will think disgustedly of those troubled
times as " the fighting of kites and crows," because he can
see nothing in them but endless jarring selfishness ; to
the modern historian they are interesting, because he
recognises in them the " Making of England," the seed-
time of a noble culture.
In regard to objects below the human level a good
deal was said to the present purpose when it was proved
that their artistically interesting qualities are personal, or
at least, vital. It is only necessary to carry the same
line of argument a step farther. Let us raise the question,
What is it that makes living creatures valuable? Our
modern sense of the value of life is certainly not primitive.
Uncultured men destroy life with no compunction on the
slightest grounds. What is at the bottom, not only of H
modern humanitarianism, but also of that interest in living
forms, which moves the great throng of naturalists ? I
cannot see that the mere fact of animation gives much
claim. If a creature has no beauty or intricacy of plan,
or is not closely connected with higher creatures, it is
nothing. As a fact, perhaps no form of life fulfils these
conditions of exclusion. But some come so near it that
not one man in a hundred thousand takes interest in
them. Compare, for example, the popularity of birds
with the neglect of spiders, and you will find an example
of my principle. Birds are not enthusiasts ; but they
look as if an enthusiast had made them. We enjoy their
beauty like children charmed by a picture and careless of
the painter.
A characteristic of art and of its allied experiences
which might be deduced from what has been already said
is its strength of vital feeling. It would be a plain
contradiction to think of enthusiasm as languid and
decadent ; and the same is true of its objects. The
higher life is strong and the objects of its interest are full
of strong life. Men, beasts and plants, mountains and
streams, clouds and air must, in order that the artist
may love them, be full of such life as is allowed them.
Beauty is a kind of high vitality ; ugliness belongs to
3i4 HENRY STURT
VI
death, decay, and disease, or the disorder that leads to
them.
III. The Separateness of Art
§ 1 6. So far we have been considering facts which
show the ' altogetherness ' of the elements of the higher
life ; we come now to facts which show their separateness.
Not that the facts are inconsistent or that we are reduced
to an ' antinomy.' I only mean that while at some times
and in some respects we feel a unity conjoining art,
knowledge, and morality, otherwise we feel that they are
separate from each other.
The separateness has in the first place what may be
called a formal or outward aspect. Art is a discontinuous
interest both in our experiencing of it and also in regard
to the objects of the interest. The former kind of dis-
continuity is too generally recognised to require proof.
Art lies outside the vital needs of our existence and
therefore must always be an episode. In regard to the
object also the artistic interest is episodic in a way that
morality and knowledge can never be. True moral
interest, such as admiration for a noble action, implies a
reference to the character of the doer of the action, in
other words, a reference to a system that is both continuous
and extensive. True epistemonic interest is not an interest
in detached facts, but in facts which bear on some big
system, preferably that supreme, enveloping system
which we call reality. We cannot pick up a piece of
knowledge or of moral interest and then drop it and have
done with it. This, however, is the case in art. A painter
sees a pretty child in the street, gets it for a model,
paints it with all his might, sells the picture and, possibly,
never thinks of the child again, save in that isolated
regard.
In the products of art both the subjective and the
objective discontinuity are exemplified. The picture
embodies a mood of the artist ; and also an aspect of the
model. Both mood and aspect are, as it were, snap-
VI
ART AND PERSONALITY 315
shotted in one self-justifying presentation. Hence the
self-containedness of the artistic product. Every one
knows that the good picture need not be in the least
useful, or teach a moral lesson, or be strictly veracious.
But its independence within its own sphere needs
emphasising too. We do not very greatly care if we
cannot harmonise the various plays of Shakespeare, we do
not care, that is, if the consistency of characters which appear
in more than one play be not maintained ; or if different
plays exhibit inconsistent views of life on the poet's part.
It is true that this self-containedness is not absolute.
We should get more pleasure from the whole series of
Shakespeare's plays if we could view them, not merely as
detached efforts, but as the expression of a continuously
developing poetic genius. But in the main the single
poem, picture, or symphony stands alone. Its main
interest lies within its four corners. It shines by its own
light ; not borrowing much light, or reflecting it.
It would have been possible, had not the empirical
proof seemed more solid, to have appealed earlier in this
essay (in § 6) to the discontinuity of the artistic interest in
aid of my thesis that its object must be humanity. A con-
tinuous interest might be thought to be interesting from its
continuity alone. It might be argued that the claim of
geometry does lie in the fact that it is an immense
complex system which the most diligent explorer can
never exhaust ; and an attempt (though I think a
fallacious attempt) might be made in this way to show
that we can be enthusiastic without being enthusiastic
over man. But take away this element of continuity and
by what can we explain the claim of art but by its
embodiment of human nature ? Where else can this
perennial fount of unselfish interest be supposed to lie ?
§ 17. But this formal characteristic of discontinuity
does not give the essential difference of art from its kindred
pursuits. That difference really consists in the felt quality
of the artistic experience and in the quality of the objects
for which it is felt. Art, knowledge, and morality are
different ways of feeling appreciation for our fellowmen.
316 HENRY STURT
VI
Art is a kind of felt experience whose quality is definite,
irreducible, and indefinable. In support of this, an appeal
can only be made to self-observation. Let us suppose
ourselves interested in some great and good man, Cardinal
Newman, for example. Then our interest may be either
moral, and move us to exhibit our admiration in conduct ;
or it may be epistemonic and move us to explore his
character with a scientific curiosity ; or it may be artistic
and move us to paint his portrait or make him the hero
of a poem or tale. My argument is that, in the main, we
should have a different kind of experience in each case.
The chief objection to this would come from those who
take a view of art which seems to me to be quite mistaken.
Put shortly, this view is that the artistic attitude is to say
" How fine ! " and do nothing. It is easy to see how this
notion arises. In the first place artistic experience is
supposed to be typified, not by the artist, but by the
non- performing connoisseur. This is a common and
excusable error. But then, by a fatal and easy extension,
any sort of non-performing admirer is credited with an
artistic experience, and the video -meliora-proboque
debauchee is said to look at morality in an ' artistic ' way.
This is not art but morality-and-water ; a barren velleity
towards virtue.
§ 1 8. On the objective side, the separateness comes
out very plainly. Defining excellent persons as those
who have strong unselfish appreciations, we may say that
the artist's main interest is in excellent persons. But
it is also true that not all excellent persons interest him
to an equal degree. The artistic sort are more interesting
than the other two.
This point may be brought out in a concrete form by
asking : What kind of face is the painter most attracted
by ? This may sound a hopelessly vague question ; but
we must try to think of the typical artist in his most
characteristic moods. In all such fluctuating matters
one may discover a centre of gravity, so to speak.
Allowing, then, for varieties of mood and idiosyncrasy
I think it true to say that the most interesting sort
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 317
of face to paint is that of an artistic person ; not
necessarily that of an artist, but of some one with
strong artistic appreciations. The faces of men notable
for other excellences have interest too ; but not so much.
Moreover, it is rare to find the other excellences, when
they reach any considerable pitch, entirely disjoined from
the artistic. Certainly it is not prettiness which makes
a face paintable. The portraits in the Royal Academy
which we gaze at are those of persons full of character,
statesmen, warriors, philanthropists, men of science,
literature, and art. The ladies who are mere beauties
we pass with an indulgent smile.
The same fact comes home to us more strikingly from
the negative side. There are people of our acquaintance
neither stupid nor morally objectionable who impress us
as alien to art. Their faces, figures, and dresses offer no
material for painting ; their conversation and way of
life have no suggestions for poetry or romance. Their
houses are oppressive with commonplace ; and an artist
would find it very hard to work in them. Now, if we
consider why these people are not artistically interesting
we shall find it is because they are themselves not
interested in art. They do not really care for romantic
fiction, or poetry, or pictures, or noble music. They
may recite or clatter on the piano ; but it is all super-
ficial. Their houses may contain fine furniture, or even
costly china locked up in glass cabinets ; but there are
none of those personal touches which show that the
owners have a genuine sensibility to the beautiful.
We need not delay long over considering the separate-
ness in regard to things. Most interesting things attract
us both from an epistemonic and an artistic point of view.
Flowers, for instance, are attractive both to the painter
and the morphological botanist, though for quite different
reasons. But we do not always get this combination.
Few things are more interesting to the understanding
than the inner histology of the human frame ; nothing
is more hopelessly impossible for purposes of art. The
subjective ground of this objective quality lies in the
1 8 HENRY STURT
VI
fact that the human inside is a thing which we could
neither synthesise nor analyse with the distinctive artistic
experience.
8 19. We may now touch on some causes which
hinder the general recognition of the separateness of
the artistic experience. One of them is that mis-
conception of the artistic attitude as the attitude of
the non- performing admiration, which was mentioned
recently.
Another cause, trivial-seeming yet powerful, is language
— the application of artistic terms to non-artistic things.
It is common to hear men speak of a pretty checkmate
or a beautiful operation in surgery. (" ' Lovely sight
if Slasher does it,' remarked Mr. Bob Sawyer.") But
such things are not really beautiful in the sense that
a picture is beautiful. The good checkmate or good
operation are doubtless, owing to their neatness and
effectiveness, as satisfying in their own way as the
good picture ; but the satisfaction is not of the same
kind. People who overlook this will talk of the artistic
satisfaction to be got from checkmates and operations.
But the use of the artistic word has no more real
appropriateness than the common cook's term "beautiful"
to describe a nice pudding.
Another cause is the transference of art-forms to the
service of interests which are not only external to art
but external to the higher life altogether. Some of these
interests are base, and then we feel that the forms are
degraded in a painful way. Usually the interests are
well enough in their own sphere. As examples may be
cited many of the popular pictures of war or hunting.
Such pictures may possess artistic merit. But often
there is no more art in them than in a photograph of a
prize-fight.
The case is rather different where art-forms are used
for moral or epistemonic purposes. This is not infrequent
in modern days ; there are examples in Browning. Much
of the interest of The Ring and the Book is ethical or
psychological rather than artistic. To say this implies
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 319
no complaint against Browning. Any great thinker has
a right to give his message in any form he finds most
convenient. It is our own fault if the boundaries of art
are confused in our minds thereby. The same trans-
ference of form is seen in painting. For example may
be mentioned a recent Academy picture of Mr. Gow's,
The Great Nile Dam at Assouan, which shows us a piece
of the half- finished wall, railway trucks laden with
Portland cement, some natives mixing mortar, the
eminent English contractor under an umbrella standing
with a little group round an engineer who traces plans
with a walking-stick in the sand. All most interesting ;
but not art in the same sense that Mr. Watts' pictures
are art.
And finally, there is the fact that the separateness
is not absolute. In art there is always some admixture
of knowledge and morals ; and in the highest art a great
deal. We shall have to consider this further by
and by.
S 20. We find the same separateness in the case of
knowledge. To the man of knowledge what is mainly
interesting is the minds and experience of intellectual
men ; or, to speak more precisely, of men in general on
their distinctively intellectual side. For, whereas art is
somewhat aside from the main business of life, knowledge
is diffused through the whole of it. In this connection
I mean by the man of knowledge not only the profes-
sional scientist who, like Sir Isaac Newton, lives to
explore and think ; but also the man of intellectual
power who, throughout the conduct of his life, shows
an unselfish love of intellectual construction and com-
prehension.
So also with morality. The interest of the virtuous
man is centred in virtuous men. It is true that other
excellences of character awake in us something of the
same sort of admiration as moral goodness,1 but in a
much inferior degree. There are phrases current which
might lead one to suppose that the greatest saints think
1 Cf. my article entitled "Duty" in International Journal of Ethics for April, 1897.
320 HENRY STURT
VI
less of virtuous men than of sinners. This is not so.
Sinners are interesting in so far as they are not hopeless,
but still have the makings of good men. Once they are
finally judged and relegated to hell, no one imagines that
the saints care anything about them.
§ 21. I must now meet an objection which has
perhaps been in the reader's mind some time, since I
said (in § 15) that the proper objects of enthusiasm are
enthusiastic people. The objection will be that I have
made each man's artistic, intellectual, and moral qualities
to depend on his appreciation of the same qualities in
others, and that thus a vicious circle is made. The
answer is that the circle is only apparent. In each case
the quality has a substantive existence in the mind of
its possessor. A has certain definite mental contents
which we call art or knowledge or moral goodness ; they
are not less definite and real, and not less his own because
he could not have them without knowing B, C, D and
others who possess the like. We may illustrate from the
case of love. A loves B ; and the chief quality which
makes B lovable is that he is of a loving disposition,
manifested in particular towards A. And so from B's
point of view. The two loves are mutually dependent ;
but the relation of mutual dependence does not destroy
their several reality.
All this would have an important bearing on the
social aspect of art and the rest of the higher life, if that
were the matter of our discussion. Society is not merely
the field in which we exercise the qualities of the higher
life ; the qualities themselves are essentially social. And
thus we see how mistaken it would be to try, as
Henry Sidgwick once did,1 to determine the Ultimate
Good by considering what a man would choose who
found himself solitary in a universe.
§ 22. I said just now (in § 19) that the separation
between the departments of our higher life is not absolute.
In the first place they are connected at the root. If we
cast our thoughts over any of our artistic actions we see
1 Methods of Ethics, ist ed. p. 374.
VI
ART AND PERSONALITY 321
that in them we exercise not only the special artistic
faculty, but also a kind of consciousness which, if not
moral, is at least akin to morality ; and moreover a kind
of intelligence which if not identical with knowledge is, at
least, akin to it.1
But, notwithstanding this basic connection, each of
these interests in its ordinary definite form is mainly
concerned with itself. If we try to combine two of them,
we run the risk of spoiling both. To enter upon an
artistic task in a spirit of moral zeal generally impairs the
artistic result. To quote an obvious example, novels with
a moral purpose are generally bad fiction without being
good sermons. And so with an attempted combination
of art and knowledge. Any one who has tried to write
philosophy with much attention to style knows how
carefully the style-interest must be kept subordinate.
Otherwise phrase-making will get the upper hand and
truth succumb. And yet we can imagine this natural
limitation transcended. We can imagine, perhaps on rare
occasions meet with, objects which engage all our higher
interests at once ; we can imagine occasions when we
could put forth all our higher faculties in harmonious
co-operation. The possibility of such a transcendence
helps to prevent that recognition of the usual separateness
of the higher interests which it is the object of this
section of my essay to demonstrate.
IV. Artistic Valuation
§23. We come now to the questions connected with
artistic valuation. I wish to draw out the full philosophic
import of the judgment that a given work of art has
artistic value. Five main questions at least may be
raised : (a) What is it exactly that is pronounced
valuable ? Is it the work merely ? Or is it the work as
the expression of a consciousness ? (b) By whom is the
1 For this reason I coined in § i a new term ' epistemonic ' as the adjective
of knowledge ; since there is an element in both art and morals which might be
called 'cognitive' or 'intellectual.'
322 HENRY STURT vi
judgment pronounced ? To whom are we to look for the
judgment? And whose judgment is the most trust-
worthy ? (c) For whom is the work valuable ? A thing of
value which is valuable for no one in particular is of course
a false abstraction. The valuable thing must be felt as
valuable for some one; and for some one more than for others.
We have to ask : For whom ? (d) The judger who pro-
nounces the work valuable must have a standing-ground for
his judgment. The ascertainment of this ground is the
most important point of the whole inquiry into value.
(e) What authority has our judgment of value? On
what do we rely in meeting those who reject it in theory
or oppose it in practice ? What guarantee have we of the
permanence of the judgment ?
These are the main questions about value, and we
shall find that the answers must all be made from the
personal point of view.
It is to be noted that I am only propounding
philosophic questions about artistic value as opposed to
others which might be called professional. If a painting-
master were asked by a pupil why he thought a picture
good he would probably specify various merits of
technique or composition. He would be quite right from
his own point of view. But these professional matters
are external to that inner reality with which we are
concerned now.
§ 24. (a) One frequently hears it said that a cardinal
difference between a moral act and a work of art is that
the former has no value apart from the fact that it
manifests the character of the doer, whereas in the latter
the doer's character is indifferent. As we have seen
(in § 16) there are facts which lend colour to this
statement. But, in the main, it is false. An effect of
colour or music which is the outcome of chance is never
the same to us as one which is the work of human
thought. What we should value in the work of art is
the consciousness of the artist manifested therein. If we
fail in doinsr this we fail in the duties of the critic.
Perhaps these duties in their fulness are too onerous for
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 323
human nature. We cannot usually trouble about the
consciousness of the tailor who makes our coat (though
the higher political economy tells us that we should), and
we do not usually trouble about the consciousness of the
painter of the average pictures on the walls of the Royal
Academy. But it is only the limitation of our knowledge
and the dulness of our sympathy and imagination which
keep us from feeling the artist's personality behind
his work.
The consciousness which the work manifests must be
of the distinctively artistic kind. That means in the first
place that it must be vivid, free, creative. Here we have
the mark to distinguish art from manufacture. The
manufacturer is not a creator but a copier, a reproducer
of the thoughts of others, or of his own when they have
got stale. He works up to a standard externally
prescribed, and lives upon a lower and colder plane of
consciousness. Here the parallel is close between art and
morals. Mechanical conformity is death to both. It is
the chief artistic danger of modern society with its vast
swamping industrial organisations, that crafts tend to be
carried on less and less in the true artistic spirit.
In the second place, to say that the consciousness
must be distinctively artistic means that it is not to be
confused with the kindred experiences of knowledge and
morality, or to be valued because of moral and epistemonic
elements in it. The arguments of the previous section of
this essay were intended to obviate the possibility of such
a confusion. Each experience has its own quality and
its value lies in the perfection of the quality. The
interests of art, knowledge and morality are autotelic
interests. What the quality of art is, cannot be defined,
though it may be indicated by description. It is an
irreducible fact at which definition stops. All we can
say of it is that it is a distinct mode of appreciating
men.
In this relative independence of art we find the meaning
of that much-abused shibboleth " Art for art's sake."
Some who could not or did not want to understand how
324 HENRY STURT vi
art is akin to the other higher interests have talked as
though an artist were all the better for being a reprobate
and a dunce. That heresy is far from extinct, though it
does not enjoy the favour of a dozen years ago.
§25. (b) Now, who is to say when the work of art
embodies vivid consciousness of the true artistic kind ?
Obviously, there is no one who has such an opportunity
of knowing as the artist himself. The case is the same
as in morals. No one is in such a position as the agent
to tell the spirit of his action, if he would only do so.
There are, however, well-known causes which impair
our confidence in the artist's judgment of his own work.
For one, there is personal vanity. The artist feels vaguely
that he must have produced a great work, because he is
sure that he is a great man. Another cause is pre-
occupation with technique. There are many effects, not
very important in themselves, which the artist is apt to
prize because they are difficult to accomplish. This is
particularly common in music and painting. In times of
decadence this secondary technical interest is sometimes
all that survives. For these reasons we are perhaps more
inclined to rely on the judgment of the artist, not at the
time of his doing the work, but when he looks back on it
after a lapse of time. His consciousness is clearer then.
But we must also remember that it is feebler, and that
new prejudices may arise to obscure old truth.
So far as the critic is worthy of attention on a question
of value, he must take the position of an artist-at-second-
hand, i.e. he must by an exercise of sympathetic
imagination go through the creative process of the artist's
consciousness. The insight of any critic is limited ;
though there are people of little creative force who have
the power of re-creation in an extraordinary degree. But
we trust it because of its comparative immunity from
personal prepossessions. Still more do we trust the
verdict of many critics, succeeding each other through
ages. This is our nearest approach to infallibility. The
ground of our confidence is not merely the number of the
voices, but rather our conviction of the organic unity of
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 325
human nature. The contemporaries of Sophocles judged
the Antigone beautiful for reasons organically connected
with Greek life ; and successive generations have ratified
their verdict. We now regard it as true for all ages
because the long consensus of opinion shows that the play
appeals to sentiments which are not merely Greek but
fundamentally human ; and we are sure that the founda-
tions of human nature will not change.
— - § 26. (c) A valuable experience is, of course, valuable
for some person. Primarily, the person ,for whom) art is
valuable is the artist himself. If any one asked : For
whom was Shakespeare's artistic life a good ? the answer ^.0 *
would be : In the first place, for Shakespeare. And this
is not an exceptional rule for exceptional men, but merely
the common rule for the valuation of human life. We
cannot say of the rank and file of humanity that A's life
is valuable because it furthers the lives of B, C, and D, and
so on. Nor can we say it of the chiefs.
But to this a necessary supplement must be made.
It is essential to the artist's character as a lover of men
that he should feel such an interest in human life as is
inconsistent with the selfishness of keeping his creative
gift to himself. He must at least intend that his work
shall be enjoyed by society. Apart from this, the saying
" Art for the artist " might be misunderstood in a sense
contrary to the whole tenor of my argument. In
Huysmans' novel A Rebours the hero shuts himself
hermetically from all contact with the world, and lives
entirely for the enjoyment of his aesthetic feelings. That
is just the sort of life I do not regard as typically artistic.
Artistic experience with its outcome of performance is
good for the artist in the same way that a saintly life is
good for the saint. It is the expression of an enthusiasm
whose blessedness it is to spend and be spent in the
following of a high ideal.
" Art for the artist " should reconcile us to those
apparently painful cases where artistic work is lost without
contributing commensurately to the common enjoyment.
The case is more frequent still in morals. How often does
326 HENRY STURT vi
moral effort fall unheeded to the ground ! And yet it
was good for the doer that he did it.
§27. {d) We come now to the most important question
of all : On what ground does the judger stand when he
judges a work of art excellent ? Here we touch upon
the ultimate basis of artistic value, indeed of all value
whatever. The answer is that he stands upon the ground
of immediate personal experience ; he judges the work
excellent because he feels or intuitively perceives it to be
excellent.
Our previous discussions have shown that this affirma-
tion may be analysed further. Let us make the analysis
by representing to ourselves a concrete case of such a
judgment. Of course it must be an artist judging his
own finished work. Now the work has value because of
—-the human character embodied therein ; character, as we
have seen, primarily of the artistic kind. This human
character in the work belongs partly to his object, partly
comes from himself. If this sound obscure, let us make
the example still more definite. Let the artist be a painter
and his work a portrait. Then the human character seen
in the painting by the painter is partly that of his model ;
and partly it is his own ; for the portrait is his work, his
interpretation. The portrait in fact has an objective and
a subjective side. Both sides are known to be excellent
by immediate experience. But, for the subjective, feeling
is the more appropriate term ; and for the objective,
intuition. When the artist was doing his best to paint
that portrait he felt that his action was excellent or noble
or valuable. And he recognised by intuition the excellence
of the character revealed in the model's face. The ground
of our judgment of moral value is the same. We ask :
Why did you judge it good to nurse your friend through
his fever ? and the agent will answer : I knew by feeling or
intuition that it was good. On analysis we shall find that
this judgment involves both a recognition of the excellence
of the agent's friend, and also a recognition of the goodness
of his own purpose in tending the sick man. Beyond
this point analysis cannot take us. I have only to add the
VI
ART AND PERSONALITY 327
caution that the objective and the subjective sides, separable
in abstract statement, are not separable in reality. You
cannot appreciate without appreciating somebody ; and
conversely (if the tautology may be forgiven) you cannot
appreciate somebody without feeling appreciation. That
is only one more example of the essential subjective-,
objective two-sidedness of our conscious life.
§ 28. It will be evident to the reader that the fore-
going account of the basis of artistic valuation is a form
of intuitionism. But there are, I venture to think,
advantages in this particular form which are not shared
by others.
(a) Intuitions, in general, are commonly described too
much in intellectual terms. This is specially noticeable
of moral intuitions. According to the common account,
a man does an act and his conscience, supervening, tells
him it is right. He sees another do it, and his intuitive
faculty is similarly on hand to give him information.
In opposition to this I would urge that there is no such
separateness in the judging faculty. A nurses his friend
B through typhus. He has a feeling that it is good to
do so, a feeling impelling him to the action. When,
in the accepted phrase, his conscience tells him he is
right, that is only his feeling-experience become self-
conscious and articulate. So with the objective side of
the action. It is A's love for B that causes A to face
danger on B's behalf. The intuitive faculty does not
thereupon step in from outside and pronounce that B
is lovable. A's intuition is simply his love for B come
to self-consciousness. I have taken the examples from
morals rather than from art because ethical intuitionism
is the more developed. But the account of the matter
would be on parallel lines if A were painting B's portrait
instead of nursing him. Another way of putting the
matter would be to say that the artistic intuition is a
function of the whole self, rather than a separate faculty
in the self.
(/3) This leads on to the next point in which my
view of the artistic intuition may claim an advantage,
328 HENRY STURT
VI
i.e. that art is not left in isolation, but is brought into
the vital system of the individual and of society. Nothing
is more unsatisfactory from a logical point of view, than
an intuition which comes from no one knows where and
issues orders no one knows why. Now we cannot in the
strict sense explain the origin of the artistic intuition any
more than the origin of any other primary function of
our nature. But if, as I believe, civilisation is mainly
founded on those kinds of unselfish human interest
which we call knowledge and morality, it is easily
intelligible that we should have a parallel interest, which
we call art, closely akin and lending powerful support
to the other two. It is intelligible, too, that moral
goodness, intellectual power, high vitality, and strength
should be approved by the intuition. For these are
prime elements of welfare in the individual and the
social system. They are conditions and consequences
at least, if nothing more, of an artistic disposition.
(7) There is, on my view, no difficulty in explaining
the variations of the intuition in different men, different
epochs, different societies. A lack of flexibility is the
most notorious fault of the common intuitionism. But let
the basis of art be an interest in men, and then, plainly,
artists will appreciate those forms of human excellence
which actually come before them. " But," it will be
asked, " is there not now too much flexibility ? Have
you not in making your intuition so flexible, destroyed
its unity ? " My answer is that there is unity in the
intuition so long as there is substantial unity on the
subjective or feeling side of it, and substantial unity in
the objects which it approves of. Suppose that we come
upon a strange artist who is producing work which he
affirms to be art. The work may not be quite like any
other work in the world, but it is art so long as he feels in
doing it as true artists feel, and so long as his object
is akin to the objects that true artists admire.
§ 29. But though I believe in intuitionism I do not
believe in the intuitional method as commonly understood.
We know Bentham's amusing account of that method as
VI
ART AND PERSONALITY 329
applied to morals. " The various systems that have been
formed concerning the standard of right and wrong may
all be reduced to the principle of sympathy and antipathy.
One account may serve for all of them. They consist
all of them in so many contrivances for avoiding the
obligation of appealing to any external standard, and for
prevailing upon the reader to accept of the author's
sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself. The phrases
different, but the principle the same. It is curious
enough to observe the variety of inventions men have
hit upon, and the variety of phrases they have brought
forward, in order to conceal from the world and, if possible,
from themselves, this very general and therefore very
pardonable self-sufficiency. One man says he has a
thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and
what is wrong, and that it is called a moral sense ; and
then he goes to work at his ease, and says such a thing
is right, and such a thing is wrong — why ? ' because my
moral sense tells me it is.' Another man comes and
alters the phrase, leaving out moral and putting in
common in the room of it," 1 and so on. There is a
strong element of caricature in this witty diatribe of
Bentham's ; but he is right in his main point, that a
purely introspective attempt to determine the content
of an intuition runs the risk of consecrating what merely
favours our private advantage or prejudice. There is
nothing to be gained by tying oneself down to the intro-
spective method. If an intuition is generally diffused
among men we can ascertain it by studying their conduct.
If human enthusiasm be the true motive of art, then a
study of artists will disclose the fact. In any case, this
is the standpoint adopted in the present essay — in-
tuitionism with the method of empiricism.
But we should be quite ignoring the distinctive
character of artistic experience if we thought we could
ascertain what is right in art by mere statistical inquiry.
We should be neglecting the personal affirmation of
value implicit in every genuine artistic judgment. This
1 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. ii.
330 HENRY STURT
VI
may be illustrated by contrasting with art a kind of
judgment in which no value is involved. Let the
judgment in question be one concerning fashion in
dress. " Crinolines are becoming fashionable again,"
says an eminent modiste, and we assent or dissent on
purely statistical grounds. " Crinolines are beautiful."
This we cannot accept or deny without a much deeper
affirmation.
§ 30. (e) We come now to the last of the questions
connected with artistic valuation, its authority. We
saw that the valuation is made by a personal affirmation.
When we meet with people who reject our valuation,
is it merely one ipse dixit against another? Having
regard to the amount of Bad Taste around us, one
might expect that we should have to combat a large
number of recalcitrants. But we shall see that this
is not the case when we come to analyse the matter.
What is comprehensively called bad taste might in
many cases be more appropriately termed rudimentary
taste. We cannot blame a savage for preferring the
music of the tom-tom to that of the piano. The latter
instrument has simply not come within his artistic range.
And on most points of art a great number, perhaps
the majority, of our friends are in an analogous position.
The stigma of bad taste should only be fixed on those
who choose the worse when they might easily have chosen
the better. As causes of ordinary bad taste we may
enumerate Fossilism, that is, a stupid adherence to
artistic forms that may have been very well in their day,
but should now be abandoned for others more adequate ;
Vulgarity, which leads us to prefer forms conducive to
self-glorification ; Crankiness, or the undue insistence on
some element which has only a subordinate value. None
of these kinds of bad taste has any special philosophical
significance. Their valuation is at bottom the standard
valuation stunted or distorted. They have no strength
of conviction, no principle to oppose to us.
§ 31. The case is different with the Decadent. It
is true that he proffers no positive principle ; but he is
VI
ART AND PERSONALITY 331
great in his denials. We believe in life ; he disbelieves
in it, despises it. If we traced this disbelief to its source,
we should find that it arises from want of affection for
his fellow-men.
From this decay of the root of interest in him we
may deduce the characteristics of the decadent. In
art he is, according to a well-known and well-approved
definition, a worker who thinks more of the parts than
of the whole. As some one has said of Mr. Swinburne,
he cares not for life but for style. In criticism, where
he abounds, he is a seeker after subtlety, an amateur
of filigree, a worshipper of la nuance. To him the
dexterity of the word-artist, who captures a just-perceptible
meaning floating on the boundary of thought, is more
precious than the first-hand statement of a fundamental
truth. Superficially, decadence is the comminution
of values.
But there is a deeper meaning in him. Let us see
if we can trace it in a concrete example. The following
may be quoted as a typical decadent appreciation of litera-
ture : J — " He was indifferent or contemptuous towards
the writers of the Latin Augustan age ; Virgil seemed
to him thin and mechanical, Horace a detestable clown ;
the fat redundancy of Cicero and the dry constipation of
Csesar alike disgusted him ; Sallust, Livy, Juvenal, even
Tacitus and Plautus, though for these he had words of
praise, seemed to him for the most part merely the
delights of pseudo- literary readers." After some slight
commending of Lucan and high admiration of Petronius,
the appreciation goes on : " But the special odour which
the Christians had by the fourth century imparted to
decomposing pagan Latin was delightful to him in
such authors as Commodian of Gaza," whose tawny,
sombre, and tortuous style he even preferred to Claudian's
sonorous blasts, in which the trumpet of paganism was
last heard in the world. He was also able to maintain
interest in Prudentius, Sedulius and a host of unknown
1 Havelock Ellis, Affirmations, p. 181.
2 A writer of religious acrostics.
332 HENRY STURT
VI
Christians who combined Catholic fervour with a Latinity
which had become, as it were, completely putrid, leaving
but a few shreds of torn flesh for the Christians to
' marinate in the brine of their new tongue.' "
In such a statement of literary preferences, to which
any number of parallels might be found, we may discern
that, if it were possible for the decadent to have a
substantive principle, it would be the Excellence of Death.
The praise of death with its allied phenomena of suicide,
pessimism, and the glorification of sin is always prominent
in decadence.1 No writer can literally and seriously
affirm the excellence of death, any more than he can
affirm the excellence of silence ; but the decadent, moth-
like, is always fluttering round it.
In the present age, when conditions on the whole are
favourable to the higher life, the decadent's contempt for
life is not formidable. Natural selection is always refuting
him. But we should feel him sorely at a time when the
struggle was all up-hill, as in the centuries when the
ancient civilisation was decaying. The decadent may be
inconsistent and despicable, but we cannot afford to
pass him with a sneer. To oppose him effectually we
must be convinced that there is a supra-mundane authority
behind our private affirmation, behind the consensus of
society and the brute force of evolution. We must be
convinced that our artistic affirmation harmonises with the
spirit of the universe.
§ 32. The same feeling is felt much more strongly
and with more need on occasions when men are struggling
for artistic reform. Artistic reform consists in a fresh
burst of enthusiasm for man and nature prompted by the
perception of valuable elements of life and character
hitherto overlooked, or blocked out from view by vicious
tradition. A typical example is found in the English
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. To call attention to new
artistic truth means a militant revolt against the en-
trenched representatives of the established order. This is
no light matter, as the Pre-Raphaelites found ; though we
1 See L. Proal, Le crime et le suicide passionnels, p. 361 sqq.
vt ART AND PERSONALITY 333
who enjoy the fruits of victory can seldom realise how
serious such a struggle was to the men who fought in it.
The ardour and perseverance to carry it through are not
intelligible without the conviction which would be religious
if it became articulate. In the struggle for moral progress
it is keenly felt and loudly expressed. We can hardly
conceive a moral reformer who did not say that God was
on his side. The artistic reformer does not take that
tone, because the matter is not enough to justify so
tremendous an appeal.
S 33. It is necessary in conclusion to define the
relation of my theory of valuation to two points on which
popular opinion has expressed itself forcibly, the right of
private judgment, and the accessibility of an objective
criterion. On the first point I appear to harmonise with
popular opinion ; on the second to disagree, though the
disagreement is, I hope, superficial.
Space is lacking to analyse fully the notion of private
judgment ; but evidently the insistence on it is important
mainly in questions of value. In the settlement of
questions of fact, on the other hand, we have to rely
largely on those who are better informed than ourselves ;
nor are we any the worse for doing so. It is for liberty
of judgment in matters of value, more especially of moral
value, that Teutonic Europe has fought so passionately
and stands so jealously on guard. What it is that is
claimed in this sphere may again be easily misunderstood.
It is not that each man claims to be his own infallible
Pope. For the strongest upholder of private judgment
will admit that it is constantly mistaken. The claim is
that things which are declared to be valuable in the way of
art, knowledge, or morality must be valued by the
individual with his free personal affirmation.
When we come to think of it, this is not a claim to
make a judgment of value in one way rather than in
another way ; the judgment of intrinsic value can only
be made as a free personal affirmation, if it is to be made
at all. For it is essential to that kind of judgment
that it should be enthusiastic, and enthusiasm cannot be
334 HENRY STURT
VI
felt vicariously. The phrase " liberty of conscience " really
means " liberty to have a conscience," since a conscience
fettered ceases to be a conscience. So in art. We
cannot commission another to make our artistic judg-
ment for us, however artistic he may be. To put the
matter in an aphorism which will cover the whole range
of intrinsic value : I can let another measure and weigh
for me ; I cannot let him love for me.
§ 34. The popular demand for an objective criterion is
strong ; but it is not at all clear, and has led to the
formulation of some impossible theories, such as that the
artistically valuable may be ascertained by reference to
Eternal Laws, or Types, of Beauty. It is hardly necessary
to enter upon a refutation of these theories, which have no
longer much scientific support. But it may be remarked
(a) that they are inconsistent with the claim to private
judgment ; {b) that no one can ever tell the world what
these laws or types are ; they are blank forms, like Kant's
categorical imperative ; (V) that even if the laws or
types in their full content were laid before us, we could
never determine artistic value by the mere process of
comparing artistic works with them, as a tradesman
compares his own yard-measure or pint-measure with
the standard of the government inspector. Such
a mechanical comparison would grossly misrepresent the
genuine artistic judgment.
And yet it is easy to see how the belief in an objective
criterion has arisen. One source of it is the feeling-, of
which I have recently spoken, that good art has a
superhuman backing. It is easy to step from this to the
doctrine that you can determine by religion what good
art is. This step is unwarrantable. For though we
might say in Aristotelian phrase that, in the order of being,
art is based on religion ; yet, in the order of our
knowledge, religion is based on art and on the parallel
functions of our personal life.
Another source is the practical disciplinary need of
having a recognised standard wherewith to put down
offenders against artistic good sense. We see the same
vi ART AND PERSONALITY 335
thing in morals, where those in lawful authority cannot
always be debating with anarchists on first principles.
But this practical need must not make us forget that the
recognised standard is but a systematisation of personal
affirmations. We must not confuse it with the chimera
of an objective criterion.
VII
THE FUTURE OF ETHICS: EFFORT OR
ABSTENTION?
By F. W. Bussell
i. Ethics as the borderland of Philosophy ; not properly within the domain
of Pure Reason.
2. Depends on prejudices, and deals with the singular and not the uniform.
3. Yet it should be examined by Critical Philosophy although in all time
Rational Ethics = Abstention. Ethical Law (unlike the Natural sphere)
is only realised through voluntary effort of individuals. The Ethical
agent (if he debates at all) makes a heroic wager. The final motive
is " loyalty to a cause not yet won."
4. Present state of Ethics in Europe, confronted with the certainties of
Science : is there room for appeal ? Becomes despairing and senti-
mental, or Quietistic.
5. Ethics (in a wide sense, as the conduct of life according to a certain
standard) proceeds on certain assumptions which are necessary before
any practical maxim can be accepted.
6. These assumptions are peculiar to European Ethics ; where the criterion
is popular, and the emphasis is on the moral life and on ordinary duties.
The Western aristocracy, as one of effort and endeavour, not of know-
ledge or asceticism.
7. How arises this conviction of the dignity of the Moral Life ? Not from
the study of Nature, which contradicts it, but from the sense of the Value
of the Individual; and from the certainty of Personal life, — our only sure
experience, though beyond the reach of absolute proof.
8. Ethics as a Realm of Faith.
9. Necessary assumptions of the Ethical philosopher.
II
10. Ethical systems have been mainly negative. In Greece, tend to be
anti-social ; where active, due to personal influences (Pythagoras and
Socrates).
11. Reflection fails to give any sufficient reason for the common behaviour of
men, and to confirm their convictions or prejudice, in favour of the life
336
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 337
of striving. Quietism, and abstention due in a great measure to the
Greek passion for Unity, in speculative matters.
12. Undue emphasis in search for Unity upon Nature (where man has
nothing to learn except maxims of prudence and experience), instead of
upon History (Narcissus). Judceo-Christian ideal transforms Europe ;
because interest centres on the individual soul ; and (in consequence,
not in spite of this) devotion to a visible commonwealth arises.
13. Abstention is the result of independent (or Naturalistic) Ethics, and the
peculiar tone of European Ethics is due to various forces in the early
centuries of our era. Ethics seeks to attain independence after the
Reformation (mainly behind current practice, and with almost exclusive
emphasis on self-interest).
14. Problem of Disinterestedness is in forefront of Ethics ever since.
15. Two divergent tendencies have marked nineteenth century; one to
Quietism, viz. Science ; the other to Effort ; Benevolence and Social
Reform, Decay of the Empire of abstractions.
16. All modern movements aim at the immediate benefit of the individual
(whatever form they seem to take), his freedom and his comfort. No
serious fear of abandonment, of self-determination. Emphasis on
Personal Relations. Individualism alone can lead to Collectivism.
17. We fight to-day against a threatened return to Oriental monism in what-
ever field. Le mysticisme c'est l'ennemi ; for it is fatal not merely to
action, but in the end to thought itself.
I
§ i. This Essay endeavours to call attention to the
somewhat anomalous position of ethical study in Europe.
Two points especially seem worthy of note : (1) that Ethics,
regarded in a broad sense as the ' science of conduct,'
demands a larger basis of hypothesis than any other
science ; and (2) that the ideal, whether of social work or
self-realisation, whether the extreme of Altruism or
Individualism, is denied both by the earlier and still
powerful systems of the East, and by the most modern
" reformers " of ethical theory in our own continent.
From the confessed obligation of personal effort and
of social service acknowledged alike by Christian and
Positivist from a religious or a secular standpoint, a
reaction threatens us, in which participate philosophic
temperaments so different as Schopenhauer, Von Hart-
mann, Renan, F. H. Bradley, Nietzsche, and last, but
not least aggressive, Mr. A. E. Taylor.1 And first, there
are peculiar difficulties in the way of those who claim for
1 Problem of Conduct, Macmillan, 1901.
Z
338 F. W. BUSSELL vi.
Ethics a secure place among the Sciences. Theology can
no longer be termed, in the strict sense, scientific ; although
the criticism of theologians may be conducted scientifically,
and in scientific language. The mediaeval Schoolmen,
rationalists at heart, following the Alexandrine lead and
possibly mistaking it, endeavoured to lay down rules for the
advance from the lower and precarious region of Faith to
the certainty of Knowledge ; just as the Mystic, emotional
and ecstatic though his aim, gravely enumerates the
mile-stones which the traveller must pass on the road to
perfection, and employs all the artifice of the intellect to
silence the intellect itself. This reign of uniform (and
regular) law prevailed in theologies both of formula and
fruition ; and no sympathy was felt for the guilty impostor
who ventured to approach and to appropriate the Summum
Bonum by the hasty short-cut of an unauthenticated
method. The Reformation put an end to this tiresome
and exacting rigour ; and like the political development
which ran parallel, it has issued in the freedom of the
individual, solely accountable, in the matters of highest
import, to the inner voice. We may note a similar
disintegrating tendency in the purely moral sphere. We
are all keenly alive to the distressing insecurity of the
domain of Ethics. It is a debatable region or border-
land of Philosophy. It may indeed be questioned if, in
the strict sense, it is a province of Philosophy at all. So
far as concerns the inquiry into past systems, the criticism
of rival doctrines, the examination into empirical psych-
ology?— ^ must assuredly be considered a legitimate
department of the all-embracing Master-Science, which
" deems nothing that is human foreign " to its survey. But
from the practical side, Ethical treatises are dynamically
ineffective ; while from the theoretical, they do not belong
to the domain of pure Reason. Viewed as constructive,
Ethics is heavily weighted with prejudice and prepossession,
derived mainly from tradition and religious influence ; as
historic or statistical, it may be impartial but can hardly
be normative ; but as concerned' now with the present
condition and future prospect of individual and race, it
VII
THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 339
must needs fall below the calm impassivity of a theoretic
science. It seeks to impose what may be termed the
categories of impulse and sentiment upon an outer world,
which seems to repudiate their sanction. It is not easily
open to the reception of truth from without ; it seeks,
hesitating and uncertain about its own data, to fix a
precarious sphere of influence for them in a world, which
if not actively malevolent and antagonistic is at least
blind and unheeding.1
§ 2. Philosophy attempts to interpret the relations of
the individual finite consciousness (or rather, that
consciousness which "believes itself" to be individual,
continuous, and finite) to an existent outer order, or to an
outer order which is " believed to exist." To be without
bias or scruple or prejudice in recording one's experience
is to have a sound, wholesome, candid, and philosophic
temper. In ethics this colourless receptivity is impossible.
Pure Thought cannot be here supreme. In no other sphere
of inquiry are the reason's axioms so plainly postulates,
which it is bound to shield from profane inspection. In
self-defence it takes shelter behind common instinct,
emotion, and tradition. It is forced to appeal to a
universal impulse or ' intuition,' and it confesses that
the moral sanctions depend on a sentiment which is only
cogent because it is everywhere found as a fact of uni-
versal experience ; not because its arguments are intellec-
tually irresistible. In all sciences, it is these early steps
which are faltering and insecure ; but Ethics, in particular,
owes everything to a set of initial assumptions and hypo-
theses, which must to all time remain " matters of Faith."
Yet these cannot (legitimately) be dethroned or reduced in
number without weakening the whole fabric of convention
1 Maeterlinck: " Kingdom of Matter" : Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1900. "We
have learnt at last that the moral world is a world wherein man is alone ; a world,
contained in ourselves that bears no relation to Matter, and exercises no influence
on it, unless it be of the most hazardous and exceptional kind. But none the less
real therefore is this world, or less infinite ! If words break down when they try
to tell of it, the reason is only that words are after all mere fragments of Matter,
seeking to enter a sphere where Matter holds no dominion." — This is very French
in tone and somewhat exaggerated, but it expresses well the sense of the chasm
that cannot be bridged between 'is' and 'ought,' between Fact and Ideal,
between pure Science and Faith.
340 F. W. BUSSELL vn
and society. Reason has always claimed to use the
emotions, and to guide the passions ; but it has usually
succeeded in controlling the latter only by expelling the
former; and has settled down into that theoretical lethargy
which refuses encounter with everyday life. The philo-
sopher in the Thecetetus is sure that he can define ideal
or typical man, but fails to distinguish his next-door
neighbour. But in Ethics, truly conceived, what is of
moment is not this typical character, the uniform or
general law, but the singular, the special. Ethics must, if
applied to practice in however slender a degree, be as
empirical as character ; — built up from guesses and
hazards, accommodated to a manifold variety of individual
character and circumstance. No two situations are alike ;
and it may be questioned whether wide sweeping dicta
(such as Kant's maxim of Universality) are ever consciously
applied to solve the problem in any given case. The day
for the empty dignity of such utterances is past. Morality,
still swaying under the blow dealt by a Calvinistic
Naturalism, seeks to build up its shattered palace on the
concrete, and refuses to be consoled by any poetic appeals
or abstractions of a Justice, a Retribution, which is no
longer actual, nor personified. Thrown back on its own
inward experiences, the inquiring Soul finds no countenance
in the natural order for its sympathetic scruples ; no aid
in discredited authority.
Reconstruction must be mainly empirical, and can
never again become systematic. Any future scheme
which claims to be comprehensive must be either merely
casuistic (an attempt to drain an unfathomable ocean),
or historic ; and this method, so far as the ultimate
sanction of right and wrong is concerned, however
instructive, is never frankly conclusive. In fine: (i) the
moral agent can never be purely rational, but breathes
an atmosphere clouded by passion, emotion, and hypo-
thesis and illumined fitfully by the wandering flashes
of the Ideal ; and (2) as dealing with the contingent and
not with the certain, with the singular not with the
typical, he has, if he act at all, to contradict every
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 341
precept of philosophic apathy, and merely compromise
with probabilities.
Ethics then is mixt or " half-bred " philosophy, and
cannot be pursued as a science by the Pure Reason.
And this, not only because it is based on certain
hypotheses, and these in fact if not in name religious
assumptions, but also because it is concerned with the
application of Law to individual cases ; x on that best but
peculiar kind of Law, which, though it is regarded as
supreme, as ' categorical imperative,' is yet our own
creation ; depends entirely on our own efforts, for,
unlike an edict of Nature or Science which precedes
and constrains, it awaits our recognition and our en-
deavour, before it can come into being. It wins respect
and allegiance, like Mill's Deity, by its pathetic weakness.
Now it is more than doubtful if the Pure Reason can
afford to recognise the Individual,2 and Ethics (save as
the very meagrest and emptiest list of general principles)
deals with nothing else. Every individual, as such, is
unique. Every ethical situation indeed can be brought
nominally under a known law, but the larger half
remains outside rebelliously and forms an exception ; and
it is for this reason that, while in modern life moral
relations have multiplied an alarming degree of complexity,
and the solving of moral problems has increased in diffi-
culty,— the general equipment of undoubted maxims is so
scanty and impoverished, that it may with safety be said
that this domain has received no new complement for
two thousand years. And this is clear from the most
superficial study of modern Moralists ; for example, Kant's
famous maxim is clearly implicit in every ancient writer ;
and besides wavers between a truism and an untruth ; for
from the point of view of Moral Law, it is superfluous
advice ; from the point of view of the individual (who is
always unique and exceptional) it is as certainly wrong.
1 Where the law is subordinated to the individual interest — the reverse of the
Natural Realm.
2 All Science proceeds by eliminating the special and the characteristic, and
subsumes what seems like exception or spontaneity under some higher or more
general law.
342 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
§ 3. It would be calamitous, however, if the foundation
of Ethics and its practical application ceased to be studied
by ' pure ' philosophers. In ancient times, when the
pursuit of wisdom was practical, and implied adherence to
a definite rule of life (somewhat after the fashion of a
monastic order in the Middle Ages), there was a constant
temptation to the student to revert to theology, either
popular or esoteric, for sanctions which abstract principles
of the Unity of Being, or the sympathy of all Creatures,
could not supply. Philosophy never existed then, as an
impartial search after Truth, — it was always in some
sense a pursuit of personal Happiness. Each School
received a " fast dye " from the temperament of its
founder, and the most fertile epoch revived inspiration
from an exemplary life, and not from a coherent body of
dogma. Personal bias and instinctive sympathy or
repulsion decided the young adept in his choice —
Plotinus, in his tovtov i^rovv, after his first lecture from
Ammonius Saccas, lays stress upon the fulness of definition
already in the mind of the inquirer. To-day such
universal or practical functions in the guidance of youth
have been undertaken or usurped by the State (in a more
exacting sense of its responsibility), or by a Church, whose
theology is not in the strict sense a Science, while its
practical usefulness would always remain independent of
its doctrinal postulates. But it will appear the consistent
duty of a Critical Philosophy to examine, to question, and
to confirm from its own realm of experience, the general
principles which we accept traditionally, on authority, or
instinctively, from some dim notion of noblesse oblige,
or from some correspondence in sympathy between our
heart and an actual School or teacher (as in Plotinus'
case), or indeed emotionally, as in the case of most active
reformers of Society : — who in all time have acted so far
in advance of any rational justification that like Plato's
sage or lover, they have been mostly called insane. All
Ethics must in the end depend upon the inward motive,
and the ulterior sanction ; x critical philosophy is scarcely
1 This will remind us of a parallel in the theological field, of the new Ritschlian
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 343
fitted to provide the one, or to discover the latter. The
history of Ethics will show us how much fuller and richer
in content is the half-conscious moral life of the citizen
or the parent, since the dawn of history, than the
speculation, which sets out to explain, or professes to
guide it. How vague, how meagre, are early Greek
ethics ! how infinitely poorer and more fragmentary and
disjointed than the actual life of any individual, taken at
random from the cities of Ionia, where, as human nature
is at bottom unchanging, we might reasonably expect to
find the same types as in the moral or social world of to-
day. Even in the more barbaric times or regions, we
wonder not so much at the flickering incoherence of
savage life, confronted with the dangers of Nature and
the problems of existence, but at its steadfast hold on
certain definite laws of conduct, and its noble devotion, at
all costs and hazards, to this convention. The philo-
sophical expression or explanation of morality has always
lagged behind the fulness of the realised life. Morality
concerned with the Good which is not yet, but may be,
through our endeavour, dwells in a chiaroscuro realm
of Faith and Instinct ; where that clear light never
penetrates that is wont to display in unmistakable out-
lines the realm of Truth or of Power, of mathematical and
physical law. Into these, antique and somehow pre-exist-
ent to our thought, we enter only to obey, or control by
obeying. But in the domain of ethics, we create the law ;
we realise, or we condemn to nothingness, by our inaction
or our neglect. We are amazed by the feebleness of its
sanction or its authority. We find it strange that Kant,
in an exoteric expression of naive wonder, should confuse
it with the might of Nature's unalterable sequences.
Heroism is irreducible to terms of Reason. The limits of
omnipotence seemed to J. S. Mill to constitute the
strongest claim on the efforts and the co-operation of
good men ; the heroic soul is conscious of the same
attraction in the field of ethics. Its decision is a bold
emphasis on the First Cause and Final Purpose of the World, — both alike hidden
from the Speculative Reason.
344 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
wager in the face of probabilities ; and it has been well
said that to be moral involves a more exacting or more
childlike faith than to be religious.
§ 4. The Ethical philosopher when he does more than
arrange and tabulate the moral virtues, finds himself
compelled to preach or to be mute. At each sentence or
maxim, resting on the precarious base of a vast hypo-
thesis, of a " moral purpose in the universe, to which I am
bound by allegiance," — he dreads the Sophist in his audi-
ence and expects those eternal questions, How do you
know ? and why am I obliged to follow ? which await all
moral dogmatism, and can never receive a valid answer
from theoretical Reason alone. It is for this cause that
all thinkers, when engaged in studying the motive, and the
Sanction of right action, either lapse into that mystical
language which is a sure sign of the default of clear thought,
or under cover of a system of Egoism or Utilitarianism
insidiously secrete, as part of the stock-in-trade, those
principles of disinterestedness or public service, which we
blush to examine (as part I had almost said of our private
physical equipment), but for which we find it impossible to
account. This has been the fate of all English and Scotch
Moralism. The result does credit to the heart, but perhaps
neither to the candour or the acumen of the Briton.
Abroad, a feminine and sentimental appeal to " unphilo-
sophical " emotions characterises French ethics, wherever
it has been able to penetrate to really ultimate problems ;
whilst pantheistic Germany seeks to found upon a
mystical Monism a definite duty for the individual, whose
separate existence, though the only immediate datum of
experience, it treats as illusory. It makes no kind of
difference whether this tendency is religious, as in Fichte's
devout and latest writings, or definitely anti-religious, as
in Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, and Haeckel.1
1 Andrew Seth, preface to Man's Place in the Cosmos (pp. vi and vii).
"Humanism as opposed to Naturalism" (as the aim of the volume) "might
be described as Ethicism, in opposition to a too narrow Intellectualism. Man
as rational, and in virtue of self-conscious reason, the free shaper of his own
destiny, — furnishes us, I contend, with our only indefeasible standard of value,
and our clearest light as to the nature of the Divine. He does what Science,
occupied only with the laws of events, and speculative Metaphysics, when it
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 345
The dominant note in these followers of Spinoza is
the call to abandon the present real in favour of a meta-
physical phantom, which to the man of average sense
seems to possess none of the qualities usually associated
with the idea of True Being. The mystical goal may be
either the Divine Life or Humanity, in its present con-
dition, or in its future destiny, — but in either case the
sacrifice of the known for the unknown is demanded ;
and thus the development of ethical thought, like all
scientific thought to-day, follows the mystical path, and
founds itself on an assumption of Unity, for which
experience empiricism must ever desiderate even probable
arguments ; — on a denial of individual worth, which how-
ever deceptive, is the sole certainty of our consciousness.
The whole question of ethics needs to be restated. In
terms of Idealism ? Certainly, in no other way can we
escape mere fragmentary pieces of good business-advice.
But of an Idealism, which refuses to consider the world,
whether as fact or design, except as subordinate to the
consciousness. " What ! " it may be urged, " revert to
the assumptions of an ' anthropocentric ' vanity ? " I
answer, they will be found to be less exacting by pure
Reason than those of Monism, debased into sentimental
altruism. And, what is even more important (for we are
dealing with a doubtful department, an " offshoot " of
philosophy), they alone can satisfy the moral conscious-
ness and the practical needs of life.
§ 5. Most of the problems which disquiet reflection
surrenders itself to the exclusive guidance of the Intellect, alike find unintelligible,
and are forced to pronounce impossible — he acts."
Again : " Inexplicable in a sense as man's personal agency is — nay, the one
perpetual miracle, — it is nevertheless our surest datum, and our only clue to the
mystery of existence."
For the precisely opposite view, consult the veteran Haeckel ( The Riddle of
the Universe). "The Monism of the Cosmos which we establish on the clear
law of Substance, — -proclaiming the absolute dominion of the great eternal iron
laws throughout the Universe. It thus shatters at the same time the three central
dogmas of the Dualistic Philosophy — the Personality of God, the Immortality of the
Soul, and the Freedom of the Will. Upon the vast field of ruin rises, majestic
and brilliant, the new Sun of our Realistic Monism, which reveals to us the
wonderful temple of Nature in all its beauty. For the sincere cult of the True,
the Good, and the Beautiful (which is the heart of our new monistic Religion) —
we find ample compensation for the anthropistic ideals of God, freedom, and
immortality, which we have lost."
346 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
have to be tacitly abandoned or considered as solved
before the simplest point in ethics can be discussed.
Philosophy regards life from an exactly opposite position
to common sense ; it surveys it as if from the other end
of the telescope ; the ordinary and familiar becomes the
most abstruse of mysteries, the exceptional and startling
shrink into the simplest and most easily explained. But
Ethics being most akin to the common sense of practical
men, has to assume quite as much, and is equally unable
to explain its hypotheses, — unless it appeals to the ambigu-
ous and oracular decisions of Logic or Metaphysic. There
are many rival schools in the present day : those who
deny that Ethics can be studied apart from Metaphysical
presupposition ; those who pronounce Ethics entirely
independent ; and those who maintain that the Meta-
physical realm can only be entered through the Ethical,
and to complete the possible alliances, those who believe
the key lies in the investigation of Nature. Into the
merits of their controversy it is not my intention to enter.
I only desire to point out that there is an almost universal
agreement that moral studies are scarcely complete in
themselves, though the precise degree of their dependence
is a subject of much discussion. It is doubtful if in any
domain of wisdom these hypotheses receive final and
adequate proof. In the field of ethics no such attempt
is made ; latent in every assertion or counsel or maxim
they are accepted as indispensable ; and, nearest to
Common Thought just in this department, Philosophy
is here also much beholden to ordinary consciousness
for certain necessary ' forms ' of belief, which are the
atmosphere enfolding every moral action. Not without
reason in intellectual Greece, did ethical inquiry come
late and reluctantly to birth ; while in China it never
advanced beyond the childhood of detached maxims of
utility, and vaguely authoritative gnomes ; — and to com-
plete the metaphor, in India, never young, morals have
never quitted the single and servile precept of absolute
Quietism.
§ 6. But to return to the assumption of Occidental
VII
THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 347
Ethics. We are constantly reminded by the contrast
of other and more ancient systems of one cardinal
assumption, which will be found to underlie all Western
Thought. The West European mind — the fruit of the
conjunction of Hellenism and Judaism under the long
tutelage of Rome — entertains a prejudice (which, as
quite beyond rational proof, I can only call instinctive)
in favour of action, striving, conflict, and social endeavour
for a common good.
But the civilised races, who form as Christendom a
united whole against Barbarism, and can sink their
differences and deny their religious scepticism in face of
a general peril, are in a minority ; they compose but one-
third of the whole human family.1 And the belief in the
1 Letters from John Chinaman (1901). "Our civilisation is the oldest in the
world. It does not follow that it is the best ; but neither, I submit, does it
follow that it is the worst. Such antiquity is, at any rate, a proof that our
institutions have presented to us a stability for which we search in vain among
the nations of Europe. Not only is our civilisation stable — it also embodies, as
we think, a moral order ; while in yours we detect only an economic chaos. . . .
We measure the degree of civilisation, not by accumulation of the means of living,
but by the character and nature of the life lived. Where there are no humane
and stable relations, no reverence for the past, no respect even for the present,
but only a cupidinous ravishment of the future — there we think there is no true
Society. . . . Admitting that we are not what you call a progressive people, we
yet perceive that progress may be bought too dear."
After enumerating the natural and human details which to the Chinese seem
to bring highest moments of emotion in life, — "A rose in a moonlit garden, the
shadow of trees on the turf . . . the pathos of life and death, the long embrace,
the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides forever away with its
freight of music and light, into the shadow and mist of the haunted past, all that
we have, all that eludes, the bird on the wing, a perfume escapes on the gale —
to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what is called
Literature. This we have ; this you cannot give us ; but this you may so easily
take away.
'' Amid the roar of looms it cannot be heard ; it cannot be seen in the smoke of
factories ; it is hidden by the wear and the whirl of Western life. And when I
look at your business men, the men whom you most admire, when I see them day
after day, year after year, toiling in the mill of their forced and undelighted
labours ; when I see them importing the anxieties of the day into their scant and
grudging leisure, and wearing themselves out less by toil than by carking and
illiberal cares ; — I reflect (I confess, with satisfaction) on the simpler routine of our
ancient industry, and prize above your new and dangerous routes, the beaten track
so familiar to our accustomed feet, that we have time even while we pace it, to
turn our gaze up to the eternal stars."
Here once more is the ideal of the East held up for our guidance by a dis-
illusioned Occidental, who impersonates a Chinese proselytiser or at least apologist
while using the poetry of Maeterlinck and the romantic pathos of Parker. In the
eighteenth century, China seemed to political reformers in Europe (and with much
truth) tounite the'resolim dissociabiles, ImperiumetLibertas,' in a constitution which
was frankly patriarchal, and a social uniformity which knew no class distinctions.
To the Idealist of the nineteenth century and still more to the Pessimist, the
348 F. W. BUSSELL vn
value of the progressive life as the highest is denied by
the rest ; just as the dignity of manual labour, first taught
by the mediaeval monks, is peculiar to us. With very
imperfect historical data the philosophers in the years
succeeding the French Revolution, thinking that somehow
they had arrived at the culminating epoch of our race,
hurriedly set forth the comparative table of human
records; and, on the obsolete computation of four thousand
years before our era, founded a scheme of the Progress of
Reason, and placed their own time at the dawning of the
last and happiest period. No one is so audacious to-day
as to prophesy the unerring fulfilment of man's hopes, or
the approaching realisation of an earthly paradise. We
are aware of the infinite spaces of history in the past ;
we confront, in the future, some accidental comet which
will whirl into fiery oblivion the petty systems and
commotions of our Planet ; and nearer at hand, we
recognise a serious menace to our Western ideals in those
teeming multitudes, who seem impervious to their influence.
Whatever is written about ethics or the human destiny
must be tempered by this wholesome reflection : that we
are in a minority, and that our view of the world is not
certain to triumph. And bound up in this view lies our
earliest assumption: that the life of action in and for society
is the highest, just because it is the only one possible for
all ; for the final standard must be within the reach of
every one. But it needs but a superficial knowledge to
discover how exceptional we are in this sober emphasis
on ordinary duties. Nowhere but in West Europe and
truest and profoundest lessons in philosophy were to be learnt at the feet of the
Pundit of India, in the ascetic renunciation which marks both Brahmanism and
the system of Gautama. Even at the close of the century, virtue and contentment
and a magical authority over natural forces are fitter to live in the single unexplored
region of the earth ; in Tibet, whither have fled at the visions of Fortunate Isles,
Hyperboreans, and 'blameless Ethiopians.' But this persistent attempt to dis-
cover perfection in some almost inaccessible fastness, either of region or of
philosophy, is a sign of protest against the mechanical complications and the
anxious uneasiness of our Western life. Nietzsche, Maxim Gorki, and Mr. Taylor
{Problem of Conduct), may be combined as having from another point of view
condemned the fundamental axioms of our Western ideas of progress and
civilisation. (For Gorki, on whom has fallen the mantle and a double
portion of Nietzsche's rebellious spirit, cf. Dr. Dillon in Contemporary Revieiv,
February 1902. )
VII
THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 349
its offshoot America is goodness and moral worth the
criterion ; elsewhere knowledge and supposed spiritual
gifts, or brute courage, constitute an unquestioned primacy ;
and we may ask whether the undoubted survival of
aristocratic modes of thought and popular confidence in
familiar names, is not due to this trustfulness in the power
of the motto ' Noblesse oblige.' Knowledge, ever since
Socrates' fatally ambiguous use of (frpovrjcns, has elsewhere
become identified with the Highest Morality ; and a
privileged caste has been set apart with the approbation
of the mob, not for a disinterested guidance of ordinary
affairs (which we expect and receive from a Western
aristocracy) but for an idle or contemptuous contemplation
of their own perfection and the passing show of a universe
which has no meaning, and of the vain efforts of others
to reach the goal of tranquillity. The Yogi or Sanyasi is
respected by the people, not because he helps but because
he despises them. Now our Western system is in the
true sense open to all; for it alone can provide a sanction
for the humblest endeavour, and give a meaning and attach
a value to the simplest act. Here there is no false
aristocracy (either of caste or cleverness), no doctrine of
reserve ; and in the final issue, our philosophies and our
religions stand or fall by the verdict of the vulgar.
8 7. But in face of this dissent among older civilisa-
tions it is worth while to inquire whence comes this firm
conviction as to the value of the Moral Life. It is
certainly not derived from a contemplation of Nature.
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
Morality exactly reverses this ; for Duty before demand-
ing the self-surrender of an individual to the Common
Good, must assure and convince him, however dimly, of
his own dignity and worth. In spite of an abortive
attempt to unite the physical and the moral realm in
evolutionary Ethics, it is sufficient here to assert as
obvious that ' Nature ' gives no such sanction, provides
no such example. At a certain point natural philosophers,
justly alarmed for the interests of morality, overstep the
350 F. VV. BUSSELL
VII
inductive method, refuse to be guided by fact, and take
refuge from a destructive scepticism in emotional appeal.
The two realms ' idly confront ' one another, as did Plato's
ideal and real worlds ; and an impassable gulf stretches
between them, which no introduction of sentiment into
physics, or mechanism into morals can ever bridge.1
Ethics cannot be studied (as Stoics studied theology) as a
mere episode to physics, as a subordinate department in
a larger survey. The student of physics must perforce
abandon in the natural world for a moment that ' anthro-
pocentric ' and prepossessed attitude, but he will resume it
again as a necessary condition of his practical life. Only
because each man believes he is an end in himself, can he
treat others as if they likewise were ends in themselves,
and not things or chattels, but persons. This may be,
like its complementary postulate of Freedom, like the
existence of the material world, an illusion ; but it is one
from which we cannot escape, and which is implied in
our most trivial act. Anarchism and Extreme Socialism
wade to the Millennium through the murder of the Superflu-
ous, whether monarch or infant weakling. As we see the
world outside only in terms of ourselves ; as we have no
conception of what it is in itself, or how it would appear
to beings with other senses ; as we have to be satisfied
with this relativity of all Truth ; so in the field of practice ;
let us be content to accept this belief in the value and
equality of the individual person as the final foundation
of our conduct ; hypothesis indeed, yet unassailable, for
without it Ethics is impossible.
§ 8. We must presume then that the life of striving,
of conscious advance and progress has some ulterior sanc-
tion, some as yet hidden significance ; that to be merged
in contemplation of the Eternal order is an unprofitable
counsel of despair ; that the ' single life,' with its pressing
and immediate duties, has some import ; and that the
social fabric is maintained by recognising and conciliating
individual rights, that social fabric, which can only be
1 Notice the confusion in Professor Huxley's mind in his strangely illogical
essay on Evolution and Ethics.
VII
THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 351
termed an end in itself because it exists only for persons.
But here is a still deeper problem. Are we entitled to
speak of a person at all ? meaning thereby a seat and
centre of activity, free and spontaneous, at least in the
final decision of its tribunal introducing from time to time
a new element, a new and incalculable force into the
tangled but continuous and unbroken skein of natural
causes ? This is without question the greatest problem of
our time ; and yet from the point of view of ethics, it has
a merely academic interest. Whether, as Lotze suggests,
a leading monad bears sway as some limited but
responsible monarch among lesser centres of conscious-
ness ; whether the Soul be undiscoverable to closest
scrutiny, and our sense of permanent identity a vexatious
hallucination ; whether the old traditional dualism of
Spirit and body must be modified or retained ; — all this
can be of account only in the theoretic domain of
psychologic Ethics ; it cannot enter, as a perplexing
problem, the practical region. We still use the old
language of blame and praise, of moral responsibility, of
conscience, and of duty ; and we are obliged to acknow-
ledge that when questions remain balanced by equal
arguments, we are at liberty to take the line of greatest
attraction in making our choice. It is a feat of sheer
legerdemain when a moral appeal is tacked on incon-
sistently to some disproof of free-will. We have to
reckon with the abiding sense of the community ; and in
apportioning our justice in the public courts, or over the
private conscience, we start from the hypothesis of this
stable point at least, — the reality of the self, and the
persistence of the ego, amid apparent change. We need
not be ashamed, especially in this doubtful province of
philosophy, of seeming to shirk ultimate problems. Ethics
is the realm of Faith ; and as time goes on, we seem to
increase rather than diminish the indispensable articles of
our creed ; — but the additional weight is no argument for
surrendering one of them, for they grow consistent in
their very paradox.
§ 9. The weight of hypothesis which the Ethical agent
352 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
has to carry in the simplest moral act may be now
definitely described under the following heads. He must
assume (i) that the world has a meaning or is capable of
bearing one, and this through his personal efforts ; (2)
that these efforts are to some extent voluntary,
spontaneous, and effective, and that indifference is a
shirking of responsibility ; (3) that social or racial
progress is a fitting object for dutiful striving in
co-operation, but that this cause can only be advanced by
recognising the unique value and permanent import of the
i?idividual as opposed to any abstraction called the type ;
(4) that from this point of view and from no other
(whether mental, racial, or physical), men are equal, on the
side of moral personality; (5) that it is a mere poetic
allegory (and perhaps not wholly a harmless one) to speak
of the progress or education of the Human Race, since to
bear a real meaning, there must be in the subject a
continuity of conscious experience ; (6) that as the
ultimate stimulus in Ethics is an inspiriting sense of
freedom to do good, and as the supreme motive will
always be, sense of loyalty to a cause not yet won, — the
result of his action to the single-minded devotee will be
Happiness ; (7) finally, that as the aim of all conscious
effort must be satisfaction felt by some one, and not
the fulfilment or (if I may be allowed the paradox) the
selfish gratification of some impersonal Law,1 Happiness
must be the goal, and Duty (or the recognition of Law)
but a means to this end.
The sole ultimate test of the truth of a system, of its
value, or its endurance, is and always must be the warmth
and sympathetic acceptance of the conscious personality,
who realises by his efforts an otherwise idle or empty
Ideal. Altruism is accepted as a philosophical norm of
conduct, not because it is rationally justifiable (which
perhaps it is not), but because in experience it excites the
highest feelings of satisfaction and joy, and " brings a man
1 " In what way," asks William James in his Will to Believe (p. 196), "is
this fact of wrongness made more acceptable or intelligible when we imagine it to
consist rather in the laceration of an a priori ideal order than in the disappoint-
ment of a living God?"
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 353
peace at the last." " Love " is the religious term accepted,
as implying the passing away of timorous or calculating
obedience to a law, as external restraint is the dictate of
an inconsiderate and irresponsible Superior. It would be
difficult to disprove that we have a perfect right to evade
such a decree, like physical laws, if we can. " Love "
secures the peculiar and inward approbation of the Law,
as in some measure connected with our own interests ; and
this approbation is the ultimate fact of interest and
importance in Morals. This connection is almost
invariably a pure matter of Faith ; but it is absolutely
needful to postulate it, as I cannot believe that lasting
approbation — sufficient, at least, to induce practice — can
ever be bestowed upon that which in the end disregards
the private and eternal interest of the approver.
II
§10. If we were to divide man's life somewhat
roughly into its passive and active halves, we might
call the former Ethics, the latter Politics. No casual
student of the history of moralising can fail to see
that the negative side is the more prominent ; — the extent
of the subordination of the part to the whole, of the
forgiveness and forbearance due to an erring brother ; or
the precise limits which a sense of uniform and impartial
justice places on the caprice or the desires of the
individual. Scanty are the positive maxims either in
antiquity or more modern times ; and if a wide and
effective theory of life has ever taken place among
philosophic systems, it will generally be found to owe
little to philosophy, much to some supposed Divine
legislation, which insisting on the virtues of docile
obedience and Faith, permits no individual scrutiny or
casuistry, and perhaps for this very reason claims and
obtains a peculiar reverence in the strife of perplexed
disputants. If we consider what are the points worth
recording in the Hellenic systems, or the most striking
features in the life of their founders, we shall see how
2 A
354 F- w- BUSSELL
VII
small was the encouragement or explanation given to
active life in Society, either by precept or example. At a
very early period their reflection had convinced them that
ordinary civic duties were incompatible with the cultivation
of the (supposed) highest gifts of man's nature. The
" common good," naively understood, even in the earliest
times, to be the end at which all must aim, is never
reconciled to the single interest. A gulf separates the
two worlds, the starry heavens of Anaxagoras, the world-
order of Diogenes the Koa/io7ro\iT7]<;, from that precise
part of the brotherhood of man in which their lot had
been cast. For fellows they looked about for some
worthier associates; the undiscovered sage; or the initiates
of a sect or a school ; or the Divine thought, that
universal and impersonal Reason (of which both God and
men partook) ; or the forces of Nature, as the river that
said " Hail Pythagoras ! " — in that despairing universalism
which degraded man to an exact equality with the other
animals ; — not only in the Italian schools of " totem and
taboo," but in the cold intellectualism of the Academy, or
in the credulous scepticism of a Celsus. Plato makes the
official and public duties an unpleasing though needful
deviation from the routine of that speculative meditation
which might so soon degenerate into mystical reverie.
The reward for this distasteful mixing in affairs was an
undisturbed leisure for tasks which if not pure Mathematics,
were astonishingly vague, and must have been something
between Euclid and a Rosary. Cicero, his constant
imitator, with a significant innovation, places the recom-
pense of Scipio's unselfish patriotism in a home beyond
the stars, where he can watch and comprehend the
mechanism of the world. Aristotle's interest, like Renan's
in public matters, is that of the Student, not the Reformer;
and the quietistic tendencies of the later Schools are too
well known to need special mention here ; no one (it is to be
hoped) being misled by the Stoics' parrot-like iteration (as
a mere academic commonplace) Troknevo-eadai top <rocf)6v.
Where a positive influence is exerted, it is due to
character and personality. Pythagoras, though anchoritic
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 355
in his tendencies, founds a monastic brotherhood, and
secretly guides the politics of the Italian commonwealths.
Socrates gives a certain positive content to this empty
though luminous disc of philosophic morality ; Epicurus
overcomes the gross or selfish axioms of his creed in the
simplicity of his life and the warmth of his friendship.
§11. The common conviction of mankind (when not
too highly civilised) is in favour of social life, with its
good-natured " give and take " ; but ancient inquirers who
set out to explore the reasons for this conviction were so
far from discovering them that they end by denying.
Aristotle, casting into the mould of a technical definition
this belief (shall we call it innate presupposition ?) in man
as £cbov 7t6\itik6v, is yet much more enamoured of the
peculiar differentia which makes man, above all things, %Sx>v
decoprjTiKov. Whether we are to believe the perpetual legends
of the intercourse of Greek leaders with a foreign or
Oriental influence — with Egyptian Priests at Naucratis,
Memphis and Meroe, with Magi, Scythians or Gymno-
sophists — it is perfectly clear that Greek ethical study led
from the outset far away from civil life and the healthy
turmoil and democratic play of equal forces ; that the
peculiar temper, inculcated on the proficient, was one of
calm and resignation, either defiant and paradoxic, as
among Cynics and certain of the Stoics, or that pure
negative pessimism, which found its last word in the ave^ov
Kal aire^ov of the Roman period. Even in the Schools
which accepted as " goods " the friendliness and good word
of fellow-citizens and the ample equipment of a comfort-
able life, which pursued some definite end not only of
vague and ascetic moral culture, but some positive branch
of study — even in these the ideal sage was rather the
member of an invisible kingdom of Reason than an
interested or responsible member of a corporation. No
subjects were more frequently discussed than whether the
wise man should marry, bring up children, take part in
political life ; and this very fact shows that reflection
could not (even among a wholesome people like the
Greeks) give a sufficient reason for the common behaviour
356 F. W. BUSSELL v..
and conviction of ordinary men ; and that starting from
an impulse to discover and confirm, it only succeeded
in undermining every possible sanction altogether. What
accounts for this peculiar phenomenon ? One fact
there is without doubt : — the Greek passion for Oneness —
as noticeable in their theoretic or ideal aspirations, as their
childlike delight in multiplicity and variegation in practical
life. A single transmutable yet identical Substance (or
<pvai<>) in the world ; an Idea, which binds into a stable
faggot the feeble manifold of the particular instance, and
this again subsumed under a more comprehensive idea
until at last Unity is reached ; a rigid crystalline globe,
in which not only the individual life becomes illusion,
but even the familiar experience of motion and of change ;
a kingdom of No^ra, which is almost one with the
individual thinking spirit as 6pdo<; X.070?, (pp6vr]cn<;, and
which is reached first by divesting the object thought,
of all garments belonging to its position in time and
space, of all specific differentiae or idiosyncrasies, until the
clear but attenuated outline of its inner essence comes to
view ; next, by a parallel process of de-qualification in
the subject, wherein the thinking mind abandons, so as
to attain truth, the cold dualism of knowledge for the
warm glow of immediate union, or at least of inter-
penetration : — such are the forms of this Hellenic Monism.
Epicurus alone, nearest to common life and thought in
spite of his pretentious style,1 is the sole representative
who absolutely and of set purpose discards all pretence to
Unity, to give free play to the individual caprice. As he
pertinently remarks, " It would be a slight service to set
free the mind from terror of divine forces, to fetter it anew
in a grosser servitude to inexorable physical Law. For
you may have hopes of conciliating the one, but the other
you cannot escape."
S 1 2. And we must also observe that owing to the
desire for a comprehensive but vague unity 2 either of Law,
1 For the (ra<f>r)s of Diogenes Laertius must be ironical.
2 To a Soul possessed of this craving for unity, rest is impossible until the final
goal is reached. The State, the Fatherland, is but a phase, and gives way to a
Koafi6iro\ts or to Nature. The eighteenth century is much to blame ; one of
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 357
or Force, or Reason, the Greek ethical student threw
himself into the arms of Nature, and refused to recognise
that in history alone can man find himself mirrored.
Man's place in the great commonwealth of natural order,
his peculiar function and differentia — this was the object
of their search. Now the essence of Nature (as conceived
by the Greeks) is to be unchanging through change, to
exhibit no conscious progress towards a goal, to be
indifferent to historical development. The desire of the
Schools is not to found an ethics of casuistry to help the
doubting in critical circumstance, but to discover a "typical"
excellence or perfection, towards which all who are capable
should strive. Reason unfalteringly proclaimed that the
exercise and the discipline of her own powers was alone
a suitable task ; and the rarefied and shadowy form of the
abnegating Sage hovers mournfully over the entire period,
as the supreme UapdSeiyfia for imitation, though they
allowed with regrets that it had never been realised.
Gazing like Narcissus into the vague mysteries of a
physical or spiritual universe, and seeing therein a faint
semblance of themselves (though lacking all realness or
positive content), pining for this image, perversely shun-
ning the companionship of grosser mortals, they ended
by taking the " salto mortale " into the chilly waters,
finding alas ! unlike Hylas, no Naiads beneath the
surface to welcome them. I have elsewhere pointed
out l the peculiar momentousness of the succession of
the Judaeo-Christian ideal of life to the Classical. On
this modern Europe has founded her principles and her
institutions, with her signal and vigorous hold on social
life, on present duties, on the duty and the happiness
of effort in whatever direction. Many before Nietzsche
(who cannot be styled an original thinker) have complained
its children, Michelet, perhaps sunk deepest in superstitious veneration for abstract
norms, writes in his book (Nos Fils, Introd. xii) : "II faut que le jeune ame ait
un substantiel aliment. II y faut une chose vivante. Quelle chose ? La Patrie,
son ame, son histoire, La tradition nationale, La Nature, Universelle Patrie.
Voila une nourriture qui rejouira remplira le cceur de l'enfant." One of the most
hopeful features of the new century is the general discredit that has come over
these mischievous assurances of a vague and sentimental Realism.
1 School of Plato, Book iii. "Judaism."
358 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
of the feminine character of Christian morality. The
virtues seem at first sight all negative and ascetic ; pas-
sivity is the end or t<e\o? in the religious life of grace,
and in daily patient intercourse with a scoffing and
unbelieving world. The hermit -life rather than the
cenobitic was the higher ideal of the first three centuries.
But hardly suspected under bishops and clergy, a busy
but silent transformation of a decadent age was proceed-
ing ; and may we not ask if Greek and Indian examples
of fortitude, constancy, and retirement were not largely
influential ? With the earliest promise of probable power
in the secular sphere, with the conviction of the delay in the
Second Advent, the ideal insensibly changes. Through-
out the Middle Ages (though the devout mystic may
possibly regret the degeneracy) we may trace the new
value and ennoblement of ordinary duties and of busi-
ness, the consecration of matter and of effort. While
still recognising a hierarchy of ideals, the Church did
not deny the worth of the lower ; while believing that
humble Faith could be transcended in knowledge or
lost in the actual Vision, she still paid honour to simple
and ignorant goodness. Now this strenuous interference
in active life and government (sometimes deprecated by
the secular spirit, always regretted by the devotional) is
due to a fundamental article in the new creed, " that the
Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."
It contradicts the Realism which rendered nugatory much
of Greek thought and much of mediaeval rationalism. A
new form of teleology (not unlike the Socratic) had held
the world of Nature to be for man's use, his trial, discipline,
and development. The entire emphasis is removed from
this indifferent background of our efforts to the fortunes of
the individual Soul, or the Divine edicts concerning it.
At first, interest is mainly concerned with a transcendental
doctrine of pre-natal sin and its consequence, and a Divine
fiat of mercy or of reprobation. It soon centres round
the prosperity of a visible state, with sure foundations,
and a goal well within view. Instead of the ' cosmic
emotion ' of Greece in face of the marvel of the General
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 359
Order, arises a belief in the progress of a tangible kingdom,
ruled by an absent head through an inspired vicegerent.
This thought inspired most of the self-devotion of those
ages, for if you preach Unity you will not get it, and the
average man will only work loyally for a cause to which
he knows himself to be superior. The clue to the meaning
of man and a justification of his efforts here, is found not
in Nature, but in history. Now Judaism and Christianity
are the only two religions in which the historical element
predominates over the transcendental and the dogmatic ;
and in consequence the only ones in which the individual
finds a significance and a place, and an assurance of his
abiding value.1
§13. In this brief survey of ethical thought down to
the opening promises of modern philosophy, we have seen
how the independent study of ethics has tended to throw
back the student on himself, alienate him from the common
life, the world of society or particulars, and concentrate
his attention on a typical and in effect unattainable
perfection, derived from an idealistic view of the Universe ;
sometimes gladdening his solitariness with hopes of higher
companionship, but always encouraging him to wait in
passive expectancy the coming of heavenly visitants.
Meantime, the unreflecting or the docile, have been
content to go about their ordinary duties, secure in certain
axioms (unexamined though they be), derived from ex-
perience of life, from tradition, from public opinion, or
from early training, based on a revelation which they
believed Divine. The Feud of the vulgar with philosophy
was at least justified so far as they saw in these studies
a pretext for abstention, and for an idleness that was
often dissolute and indecent ; which shocked and derided
rather than confirmed those common prejudices, emotions,
1 Deussen, writing on Indian Philosophy, has remarked: "As surely as the
Will and not the Intellect is the centre of a man's nature, so surely must the
pre-eminence be assigned to Christianity, in that its demand for a renewal of
the Will is peculiarly vital and essential. But as certainly as man is not mere
Will but Intellect besides, so certainly will that Christian renewal of the Will
reveal itself on the other side as a renewal of knowledge, just as the Upanishads
teach." Thus in the New Testament and the Sacred Books of the East, " these
two noblest products of the religious consciousness of mankind," he reconciles
deupia and 7rpa£is, and Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
360 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
and sentiments, upon which was based even the most rudi-
mentary of Greek commonwealths. The union of Ethics
(as the negative side) with Politics (as the art of practical
life in Society) was the result of various forces at work
in the early centuries of our era. The apparent quiescence
of early Christian Society was but a period of feigning of
idleness, a reserving of energy, or a new storing of power.
The union of the two spheres of the Secular and the
Sacred under a single authority brought in for a time a
conciliation of interests, the common good and the unit's
welfare. The Roman Church might elevate the contem-
plative virtues, following Aristotle, as a counsel of perfection ;
but it never neglected to guide, indeed to interfere with
life in its minutest detail.1 But with the division of
provinces in the growing spirit of independence — a division
which we unhesitatingly assert to be a final, conclusive,
and salutary conquest of the human mind — came a new
attempt to discover an independent (naturalistic or
egoistic) basis of moral conduct ; and to free from an
irksome villeinage, not merely science, but conduct.
Beginning once more in vacuo, the early attempts at
systematising moral behaviour astonish us by their crude-
ness, their inferiority to current practice, their niggard
calculation of self-interest, their ignorance of human
nature. These philosophers, weighted (like Huxley in
more modern times) with the doctrine of Original Sin,
could conceive of no good in human nature. Each man
was a " child of wrath " ; a grasping yet pusillanimous
savage, whose quarrelsomeness threatened the race with
extinction, had not a covenant of fear, to impose bounds
on this fatal liberty, been framed in some mythical age.
Self-interest could be the sole motive for action ; and
government, religion, and the control of public opinion,
were but outward restraints, necessary indeed to the
welfare of the majority called the State, but awakening
1 Heine {Religion and Philosophy in Germany) and most historians of
philosophy are extraordinarily at fault in estimating mediaeval aims and tendencies.
To take Aquinas and Bonaventura as types of the whole age is as great a mistake
as to take Huysmans or (on another level) d'Annunzio as specimens of the aspira-
tions of all French or all the Italians.
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 361
no sympathetic echo, certainly no loyal devotion, in the
heart of the individual. They owed their origin to that
defect of human nature (or the universal order) which
prevented in the conflict of equal 1 and unyielding interests
the attainment of personal happiness in supreme selfishness
and irresponsibility. While Law, civil and ecclesiastical,
while government, arbitrary or democratic, with the whole
machine of social intercourse, pursued the even and
unreflecting tenor of their way, and allowed no doubts
or sophistries to interfere with the orderliness of civilised
society, — the Philosopher, ignorant or careless alike of his
own inner psychology or of man's historic development,
stood helpless and discouraged when confronted with the
simplest moral action. He searches for the spring of
action amid the most universal and brutish of our natural
instincts (that of self-preservation at all costs). Failing
to discover it, he was in the end compelled to call in the
aid of an inexplicable and arbitrary moral law imposed
by Divine Legislation, whose sanctions (especially after
the failure and abandonment of religious persecution)
remained ambiguous, or were relegated to the somewhat
uncertain sphere of a future life. So impotent were the
pretentions of Ethics to independence at that period. It
is far from my purpose to refuse to Philosophy an ultimate
and honourable alliance with a religious view of the world,
but it is mere weakness to take refuge so hurriedly in
the Divine.
§ 14. The Greeks, starting with the obvious definition
of man as ^wov ttoXitikov, had nevertheless tended to centre
interest on the equally unmistakable fact that he was
%Giov \oyttcov. It was found impossible to reconcile the
two domains, and the wise man looked elsewhere for the
perfect employment of his highest faculties (evSaifxovia)
than in the narrow duties of domestic and social life. The
best of men, the sincerest of philosophers, when at length
1 The early post-Reformation speculators were very proud of having upset
the hierarchical House of Lords, called Mediaeval Feudalism. Interest centred
on the fiction of pre-social man, " naked and unashamed." Postulating for him
a liberty and an equality which they were at no pains to define, they led directly to
the horrors of the French Revolution.
362 F. W. BUSSELL vn
invested with a power nominally absolute, was unable to
effect any improvement in mankind, or indeed exert any
influence on the fabric of Society. The reign of Marcus
Aurelius, disastrous to the Romans, was, however, useful
to posterity, as warning against excessive hopes in
philosophic or scientific moralism to-day, or in the results
of academic or idealistic legislation. Whatever the cause,
the schism was complete ; and philosophy, though it
claims to be a practical rule of living, had to leave the
real business to the equity and opportunism of Roman
administration. In the Christian period, in spite of the
practical efficacy of the Catholic Church in the sphere of
conduct, it must be confessed that in theory the significance
and value of this world was subordinated to the future
kingdom of recompense. The rationalism of the School-
men, exerted with startling audacity in the region of
Theosophy and the deepest mysteries of the Divine
essence, never applied itself to a thoughtful survey of
human nature, its springs of action, and capability of
perfection, but contented itself with an empty and formal
classification of qualities and virtues. Thus, as we have
seen, into this unknown region of our own heart the early
independent philosophers of modern times penetrated with
the burden of original sin on their shoulders, and saw in
man — apart from the divine grace (as some still supposed)
or the restraining influence of external law, "the interest
of the many weak " — nothing but a beast of prey. The
Church, rich in acts of mercy, and in striking examples
of the highest unselfishness, had nevertheless no theory to
account for the more generous emotions (let us hope a
fairly large portion of our life) except on the hypothesis
of self-interest, the attainment of a deferred annuity or
an eternal reward. Practice, here as often in advance of
thought (because love and loyalty, the true marks of life,
cannot be expressed in terms of thought) — exposed to
the notice of the speculator an entire class of behaviour,
for which he had no name in his lists but " benevolence " ;
and yet on this the interest of Society was more and more
concentrating. Of the immediate unreflecting pleasure of
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 363
an unselfish action, without this deliberate rational calcula-
tion of its effects in a transcendental realm, philosophers
before Shaftesbury must have had ample experience, but
did as a matter of fact fail to understand the significance.
And as since that time the Problem of disinterestedness
has stood in the forefront of all ethical discussion, it is
there that the real puzzle lies, the true difficulty of a
rational presentation of ethics.
When the French Revolution, born of the brutish
axiom of pure self-interest, suddenly (like modern scientific
sentimentalism) called upon its votaries to sacrifice them-
selves to an abstraction, it could indeed readily count upon
a firm loyalty and devotion to principles if no longer to
persons. But it could not account for this without paradox,
nor explain it without contravening the sacred laws of the
" Age of Reason." Reason indeed, as Mr. Kidd has
pointed out, would rather seem to summon us from the
vain prospect of a terrestrial paradise for some remote
race, to the " cultivation of our own garden " — the single
remembered adage of Voltaire's Candide.
§15. The Nineteenth Century, which we can no
longer call ' present ' or ' our own,' belonging, as it does, to
impartial history and criticism, is marked by two some-
what opposite tendencies which closely considered are
irreconcilable: (1) the practical benevolence, first issuing
in a readjustment of imaginary civic rights, as might be
expected from the visionary idealism of the followers of
the French Revolution, and now turning to the more
useful problem of the substantial betterment of the
worker's lot, not only as a matter of compulsory education,
or sanitation by means of Act of Parliament, but as a
personal and sympathetic familiarity with individuals in
the suffering class ; (2) the much-eulogised advance in
human Science,1 both in destroying the boundaries of
nations and their mutual exclusiveness, in eliminating the
marvellous or the unknown (one of the chief sources of
hope in our life) not only from this shrunken planet but
1 "Science" (says Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe) "has made modern life
cheerful and comfortable."
364 F. W. BUSSELL vii
even from stellar space, and in manifesting the reign of a
law and a certainty or a fatalism — which by no stretch of
fancy can be called moral or retributive — dominant and
supreme in every part of our body or mind, in the lot of
nations, in the destiny of the poor. The former makes
for practical effort, the latter for quietism and abstention.
The one rests on the conviction of the abiding value of
the individual, however difficult to explain, justify or
define, and the relativity of all else; the other, whether
from the side of religious or physical Monism,1 preaches
that complete or implicit mysticism, which denying the
individual as an illusion, and glozing over his sufferings in
advancing the world -purpose for some inscrutable end,
proclaims the tyranny of the triumphant One.2 The
practical tendency, clinging fast to religious dogma or at
least to that spirit of endeavour which it seems to beget,
gives especial attention to the weaker of mankind, and
repairing the more obvious unfairness of lot by charity,
saves the infirm, and combats Natural Selection at every
point. The other, with eyes fixed on the unity of the
1 And the two species are very hard to distinguish, as may be seen in the
vacillations of Stoicism.
2 It is worth noticing that a protest against this dominion of abstractions to
which Europe, freed from arbitrariness of kings and priests, is bidden to bow, —
reaches us from a pioneer of anarchy, the opposite of Socialism, in rejecting
Realism for the concrete. "Max Stirner" (says the eloquent Vernon Lee) "builds
up his system . . . upon the notion that the Geist, the intellect that forms
conceptions, is a colossal cheat, for ever robbing the individual of its due, and
marring life by imaginary obstacles. . . . Against this kingdom of Delusion the
human individual — der Einzige — has been since the beginning of time slowly
and painfully fighting his way ; never attaining to any kind of freedom, but merely
exchanging one form of slavery for another, slavery to the Religious delusion for
slavery to the Metaphysical delusion, slavery to Divine right for slavery to civil
liberty, slavery to dogma, commandment, heaven and hell, for slavery to
sentiment, humanity, progress — all equally mere words, conceits, figments, by
which the wretched individual has allowed himself to be coerced and martyrised ;
the wretched Individual who alone is a Reality." We may discount, to be sure,
the violence of Stirner, or the Thrasymachean unscrupulousness of Nietzsche ; in
the somewhat anagmic Europe of to-day, we are not likely to see an outburst of
those simpler and barbaric sentiments of rapine. It is not the anarchy of Force
but of Quiescence, not Kropotkin but Tolstoi, that is the danger. That the
leisured and (presumably) educated classes should look down on politics is perhaps
natural but alarming. " Duty in anything but a negative form is incompatible
with Happiness." — Before an inalterable and undeviating Evolution (whence and
whether we know not), whether of physical power or of a Universe of thought
(Wundt, Ethics, pp. 178-180), any real effort is superfluous. If we do~not bow
to the Universal will, we stand outside the course of events, and delude yourselves
with the pleasing luxury of defiance (as the Stoic did, for all his pussy-cat
resignation).
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 365
Universe, or the outward prosperity of a Society, advo-
cates, in its more candid moments, " Social Surgery," and
demands to control and appraise the output of human
material as much as the amount and value of any other
commodity. It does not require the violent language of
Anarchy to assure us that the weak individuals who yet
form the strong majority will never submit to this. The
European mind has been for six hundred years striving
to overthrow the Heteronomy of Dogma and Deduction,
and find out some more estimable substitute than un-
questioning passive obedience — non-resistance in politics,
and confidence in a father confessor's guidance in spiritual
matters. The individual in the very moment of victory
is certainly not going on his travels to discover a new and
more exacting master. Around the mediaeval objects of
popular reverence, the Sovereign, the Emperor, the
Director, there hovered all the radiance of Divine
sanction. Law was personified, and (as Epicurus saw) a
person is adaptable, and may be mollified or exchanged.1
The popular suffrage was won by the appeal to democratic
instinct, which deluded the commonalty into willing
obedience even in the case of the French soldier of the
Revolution, because the highest offices in Church and
State, nay the Empire itself, were open to all.2 But even
the cleverness and the imagination of Comte cannot invest
the Race, Humanity, with any of this lost charm. As a
stimulant to action it is ineffective ; as a substitute for
religious feeling it is absurd.
S 16. It is above all necessary to remember that any
ethical system must be founded upon consideration for
the individual. All the modern movements bound up in
the general terms, Trades Unionism and Socialistic Legis-
lation, are (so far as they are demanded by the working
classes) frankly egoistic ; recognising co-operation as
1 Thus Despotism has always found a corrective in assassination, and is more
sensitive than any other form of government to public opinion, if it once finds
expression.
* So are political offices to-day, in the Democratic regimen which defeats and
denies itself. The only cure for the complementary evils of professional statesmen
and pessimistic abstention is a hard-working and gratuitous aristocracy.
366 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
essential, but subordinate to the attainment of individual
desires, and as a means not as an end. Calvinism which
enslaved the will to a divine and inscrutable edict, out of
the plane of human reason and justice, was repelled with
no less indignation by the new movement than the doctrine
of passive obedience to a luxurious king's caprice. How-
ever decorated by appeals to abstract Right and Justice,
the writings of the Labour leaders aim clearly at one
thing — the equal division of external goods, to which, by
the way, the Greek schools subsequent to Aristotle united
to deny the title good altogether. Disappointed alike
with the failure of Machinery and the Franchise to increase
the general distribution of comforts, and to put an end to
the subservience of the million to the luxury of a few,
they entertain a justifiable ambition ; but it is difficult to
impart ethical notions into this challenge, except those of
a candid and thorough-going Eudaemonism.1 Universal
Eudaemonism indeed, as Wundt would call it, but only so
because in Utilitarianism alone is there secure fruition of
personal happiness. The prospect of the extinction of
competition in European Society cannot be seriously
regarded. The voluntary abandonment of self-determina-
tion may take place under stress of national circumstances
(the case of France under Napoleon III. will recur) — or
of individual privation. Something of the sort we see in
those combinations of Socialism which often demand
more patient self-sacrifice of the unit than they can repay
by any tangible benefit. But in Europe, at least in the
Germanic and progressive part, the whole temper of the
people is against State control in private affairs, and the
same irksomeness which will eventually expel Militarism,
would make short work of its would-be successor.
Founded amid the wild forests which the Germania of
Tacitus describes to us, and gradually spreading over the
homes of now decadent Classical civilisation, the Germanic
individualism is loyal to Sovereign and State, because of
1 If the undeviating Law of Natural Selection, or the equally compelling
edicts of Social Legislation, could bring the much-needed reforms, the individual
need not exert himself, as success would be certain, and his efforts superfluous.
vii THE FUTURE OF ETHICS 367
the principle of noblesse oblige: just because it is not a
compulsory but a willing homage. If the practice of war
is demanding the greater freedom and spontaneity of the
single soldier, in the political and ethical world there
seems to be a similar recognition of the need of an initial
(not a subsequent) independence of system and formula.
The uniting bond between the (often) lawless caprice or
egoism of the one, and the general order and welfare of
the whole, must be a respect and an affection for persons,
and not a cold and distant homage to abstract principles.1
S 1 7. To return, in conclusion, to our original contrast
of Oriental and Occidental modes of thought. Immersed
in unconscious resignation to a spiritual, physical, or
political unity, the Eastern rouses himself to reflection
only to sink back into apathy, from a sense of impotence.
The vague Pessimism which more or less strongly
tinged their systems in very remote times, spread into
Hellenic culture, and is revived to-day in reaction against
hasty Optimism, — is the result of their power to criticise
but not to alter. The illusion of freedom is all that
separates us from the unreflecting happiness of animal life ;
and the Sage cannot be consoled by the thought that his
soul is part of the universal Divine essence. All mysticism,
East or West, tends to diminish on close survey the part
which is truly Divine ; passions, anger, practical impulses,
virtues, discursive understanding, and at last reason itself
and thought (^nXrj vor)ati) are successively sacrificed as
unworthy of this lofty origin ; and the single link is the
mysterious point " Synderesis," just the background of
1 It must be confessed that while philosophy in England has spoken forcibly
in favour of this ultimate axiom, spontaneity, and has regarded with disapproval
the extension of State control, German thinkers have, on the other hand, been
too much enamoured of the whole to care for the parts. But the unification of
Germany and the influence of Hegel, "last of the Schoolmen," will account just
now for the prevalence of this Realism, which certainly will not last, in prejudice
to the character and temperament of the nation.
Germany (once the home of individuality, but owing to its long divorce from
practical life, for a long period a nation of dreamers) speaks with mystical pride
of such subordination of unit to whole, of detached fragment to whole mass, but
it is akin to the whole temper and common sense of English philosophy, which
here at least, in the department of positive Ethics, is entitled to credit both of
originality and (compared to continental velleities) of a certain measure of
achievement.
368 F. W. BUSSELL
VII
our thought, the unfathomable depth of our consciousness,
which, even if it be the apex and throne of our being, can
be reached only by ceasing to think as well as ceasing to
act. Spinozism (and indeed all Monism) is the supreme
achievement and the necessary goal of pure Reason, intent
on the mysteries of life and compelled, by virtue of its
own nature, to refuse all repose until it can rest or dissolve
in a final and absolute vacuity. Mysticism, in the same
way, whether pessimistic or devotional or merely physical,
is the unfailing last term of such a survey, though it claims
to be purely intellectual. From the Western point of
view (which, I repeat, is only a prepossession of our mind,
and cannot be explained or defended with complete
success), " le Mysticisme c'est l'ennemi." Ethics, re-
garded in the widest sense as the Science of the conduct
of life in Society, cannot look with equanimity at the
removal of all possible motive or stimulant to action.
As it confronted with defiance the arbitrary decrees of
Calvinism or the selfishness of a dissolute Court, so it
finds its duty to-day in combating, in the interests of
Practice, the tendencies of modern scientific, political,
humanitarian, religious Unification. The result is the
same in all such systems, whether the unity, of which we
are transient and unimportant manifestations, be a natural
Substance or a physical Law, or a Communistic State, or
the Life of the Race, or in Idealism, a single Spirit behind
the seeming variety of individual experience and thought.
In the two extreme views we are either the result of the
Law of substance, or the " organ of a reason " which is
not our own. In neither case are we what we thought
we were. But upon the prejudices and postulates of our
genuinely different soul-life has been built the structure
of European ethics and society, and we shall be obliged
in the end to revert to that region of Faith, wherein lies
the spring of benevolent activities, and desert the supposed
discoveries of Pure Reason ; for therein lies stagnation
and lethargy not merely of action but in the end of
thought itself.
VIII
PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE
By H. Rashdall
1. The Idealist position assumed.
2. What is meant by the term ' Personality ' besides consciousness ?
3. (a) A thinking, not merely a feeling, consciousness ; (£) a certain per-
manence.
4. (c) The person distinguishes himself from the objects of his thought,
(d) and from other selves : Individuality.
5. (c) The person has a will or is active.
6. It is difficult to deny any of these characteristics in their most rudi-
mentary form to the lowest or at least to the higher animal intelligences
(cf. the case of children). Personality is a matter of degree.
7. Morality might establish a sharper distinction, but it is impossible to
pronounce absolutely where this begins.
8. Yet these requirements are not fully satisfied even by man : human per-
sonality is imperfect. If satisfied at all, they must be satisfied only by
God.
9. Belief in God assumed on idealistic grounds. Not merely a Universal
Thinker but a Will.
10. Objections to the idea of Personality in God. (a) 'No subject without
an object ' ; but this does not necessarily imply that the objects from
which the subject distinguishes himself are other than the changing
states of himself, willed by himself.
11. (b) A 'higher unity' is demanded; but this is unintelligible if it is
mef.nt that the distinction between subject and object is to be effaced.
12. (c) Some deny that God is Will as well as Thought; but the idea of Causality
includes final causality, and demands ' activity ' in the universal Mind.
13. {d) The ascription of Personality to God does not (as may be objected)
involve Pluralism or independent, unoriginated souls.
14. (e) It is contended that God must be thought of as including finite spirits.
This idea arises from the assumption that the principium itidividuationis
of a being that exists for himself is the same as that of a thing which
exists only for other. Our inability to distinguish between two minds
whose content is identical does not prove that they are one and not two.
1 5. Reality of the Self vindicated. God may know other selves without being
such selves.
16. How the knowledge of other selves, as they are for themselves, is possible.
Confusion between the content of thought which is a universal, and there
2 B
37Q H. RASHDALL
VIII
fore ' common ' to many minds, and the actual thinking consciousness
which thinks.
17. Is God finite or infinite?
18. The question of Time.
19. God is not the Absolute. The Absolute is a society which includes God
and all other spirits.
8 I. I propose in the present paper to inquire what is the
real meaning of the term Personality, and then to ask in
what sense that term may be applied firstly to individual
human beings and then to God.
In discussing a subject which really forms the apex as
it were of the whole metaphysical pyramid, it is necessary
to assume a good deal. One cannot begin at the bottom
of the pyramid, but must assume that our foundations
are already laid, and even that we are much nearer the
top than the bottom of our theoretical structure. I shall
assume in short the position of an Idealist.1 I shall
assume that we have followed and accepted the line of
argument which goes to prove that there is no such thing
as matter apart from mind, that what we commonly call
things are not self-subsistent realities, but are only real
when taken in their connection with mind — that they
exist for mind, not for themselves.
§ 2. If this position be accepted, it must carry with it,
it would prima facie appear, the existence of the souls,
spirits, or selves, which know or experience the things.
I must not stay to meet the argument by which writers
like Mr. Bradley attack the ascription of absolute reality
to individual souls. Anything that I can say on that
subject may be most fitly reserved for a later stage of the
argument. I put aside for the present the question
whether personality carries with it the idea of reality.
Even by those who decline to consider persons as
absolutely real, it is not denied that persons do in a sense
exist. What is meant, then, by saying that persons exist ?
What is the differentia of a person ? First and most
obviously personality implies consciousness. The main
question indeed that may be raised about Personality is
1 1 have attempted a very brief and popular outline of the idealistic creed, as
I understand it, in its theological bearings in a recently published volume of
essays entitled Contentio Veritatis, by Six Oxford Tutors.
vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 371
" What more besides consciousness is implied in it ? "
Worms are commonly supposed to be conscious, but they
are not ordinarily called persons. How does the mind
of a man differ from that of a worm ?
§ 3. (a) I suppose it will be universally admitted that
a person is a thinking consciousness, not a merely feeling
consciousness. Personality implies thought, not mere
sensibility.
(b) And this carries with it the further implication of a
certain permanence. If such a thing as a purely feeling
consciousness exists, its life must be supposed to consist in
a succession of experiences, each of which only occupies
consciousness when it is present, and is quite unconnected,
for that being, with the consciousness of any other moment.
The feeling of one moment might indeed produce effects
which will alter or modify the feeling of another moment,
but the consciousness of that second moment is not
aware of this connection with preceding moments. A
personal consciousness puts together and presents to itself
and brings into relation with one another experiences of
diverse moments. A certain degree of permanence is the
second idea that we associate with personality.
§ 4. (c) And this permanence of the consciousness
amid changing experiences further carries with it another
characteristic. The person distinguishes himself from the
objects of his thought, although the ultimate esse of these
objects must, if we are really faithful to idealism, be
experiences actual or possible of that same consciousness
or of some other consciousness.
(d) Among these objects of thought which a person
knows are, however, not merely things which exist for
consciousness only, that is, exist for other (as the phrase
is) but also other selves which are not known merely as
objects for this person's thought, but as beings which
exist for themselves. Many difficult and interesting
questions may be raised about our knowledge of other
minds, but these cannot be dealt with now. It is enough
to say that the consciousness which is personal distinguishes
itself from other consciousnesses and particularly from
372 H. RASHDALL
V11I
other persons. Individuality is an essential element in our
idea of personality.
8 5. (e) So far there will be perhaps little dispute. I
am possibly asserting something less universally admitted
when I say that the most essential of all attributes of
personality has yet to be mentioned. The person is not
merely a feeling but a willing or originating consciousness.
The self is conscious of being an ap^rj ] — whether in the
sense of the Libertarian or in the sense of the Determinist
who believes in " self-determination," need not be discussed
here. Of course, willing implies and is essentially con-
nected with both thought and feeling, but it is not the
same thing. There cannot be will without thought or
feeling ; equally little can we form any distinct idea of
what thought would be without will. For us at least
there is no thought without attention : and attention is
an act of the will. As Mr. Bosanquet puts it, " When-
ever we are awake we are thinking, whenever we are
awake we are willing." And the willing and the thinking
are most intimately connected. Thought is an act, and
we do not perform that act any more than any other act
without a motive, and that implies feeling.
Our idea of a person is then the idea of a consciousness
which thinks, which has a certain permanence, which
distinguishes itself from its own successive experiences
and from all other consciousness — lastly, and most
important of all, which acts. A person is a conscious,
permanent, self-distinguishing, individual, active being.
S 6. What consciousnesses then possess personality ?
It is generally admitted that human beings possess person-
ality, if any. But what minds do not possess personality ?
Most people would incontinently deny it to a worm,
though they are fairly satisfied that worms have some
kind of consciousness. And yet I confess I cannot attach
much meaning to the idea of a consciousness which feels
but does not know at all — even for a second — what it
1 For the defence of this proposition from the psychological point of view
I may content myself with referring to Dr. Stout's "Analytical Psychology,"
passim.
viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 373
feels ; if it does know, however dimly, if its feeling has
any content, here, it would seem, there must be rudimentary
thought. Worms admittedly wriggle : if they have the
slightest awareness of this wriggling, there would seem
to be a rudimentary idea of space, though no doubt they
are quite incapable of grasping the truth that space
excludes enclosure by two straight lines. Again, feeling
must occupy a certain time or it would not be feeling
at all. An atomic " now " could not even be felt. Mere
feeling by itself, therefore, would seem to imply a certain
continuity of consciousness, a sense of transition from one
feeling to another, a rudimentary permanence.1
And still more confidently may we assert that not
even from the lowest forms of animal consciousness can
we exclude the idea of impulse, activity, conation, as the
psychologists call it. In his brilliant Gifford Lectures we
even find Professor Ward sanctioning to some extent the
attempt to make activity a more fundamental and earlier-
developed characteristic of animal life than thought, and
(to me more questionably) to attribute teleological activity,
and with it apparently consciousness, to plant-life. What-
ever may be thought of these speculations, animals at all
events have impulses, and it is impossible to draw any
sharp line between the type of impulse which we call
instinct, in which we assume that there is no consciousness
of the end aimed at, and the reflective resolution of the
full-grown man who presents to himself a desired object
and deliberately adopts it as his end. Without some
consciousness — I will not say of an end but at least of
the act towards which there is an impulse — even instinct
would not be instinct, and between the blindest of instincts
and the most deliberate of volitions there are probably
impulses of every degree of reflectiveness.
But whatever difficulties may be felt with regard to the
worm or the jelly-fish, when we come to the higher animals
1 " Every feeling of pleasure or of dislike, every kind of self-enjoyment, does in
our view contain the primary basis of personality, that immediate self-existence
which all later developments of self-consciousness may indeed make plainer to
thought by contrasts and comparisons, thus also intensifying its value, but which
is not in the first place produced by them." — Lotze, Microcosm its, Bk. ix.
chap. iv. , E.T. ii. 679.
374 H. RASHDALL
V11I
at all events, it is clear to me that it is wholly arbitrary to
deny to the higher animals in some rudimentary form
each and every one of the characteristics which we have
held to constitute Personality. And yet where shall we
say that Personality begins ? It is impossible — in all
probability with the amplest knowledge it would still be
impossible — to say where personality begins in the evolu-
tion of animal life, just as it is impossible to say where it
begins in the life- history of the individual man. The
newly born infant is no more of a person than a worm,
except Suvdfjbei. Yet it is impossible at any period in the
life of the child to say to it " To-day thou art a person ;
yesterday thou wast not." Personality in short is a
matter of degree.
8 7. We may no doubt find a more definite test of
personality, if we add to our other differentia; one which
undoubtedly has a good right to be included in it, the
capacity for Morality. Here we should have little diffi-
culty in saying definitely that there are some types of
consciousness which are below personality altogether.
We may, indeed, see germs of Morality in the sociality
of animals ; but we do not commonly consider Morality
to begin till we reach the stage in which there is definite
choice between conflicting impulses. In the lower animals
it is commonly assumed that every impulse necessarily
determines action while it is there, or until its place is
taken by another, which then becomes similarly irresistible.
But still it would be difficult to say that in the highest
stages of animal life this dispossession of one impulse by
another is effected entirely without comparison between
the ideal satisfaction of the two impulses ; and it is diffi-
cult to say at what point in the evolution either of the
individual or of the race the choice between the conflicting
impulses — between, for instance, a race-preserving action
and a self-preserving one — becomes sufficiently deliberate
to constitute Morality. If we place the beginning of
Morality high, we must admit that there is something
very like Morality below that limit. If we place it low,
we shall have to admit that the germinal Morality of the
viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 375
savage is very unlike the developed Morality of the
civilised adult. And even in civilised adults the capacity
for Morality varies so enormously that it is quite an
arguable position to maintain that in some men it is non-
existent or wholly undeveloped.
8 8. There is no reason to believe that what we have
laid down as the essential characteristics of personality
are fully satisfied by any form of consciousness below the
human, though to no consciousness can one deny some
approximation to most of them. But are they fully
satisfied even by the human Self? Certainly Socrates
was more of a person than a savage. But does even
Socrates fully satisfy the demands of personality ? Apply
the test which discriminates the thinking consciousness
from the merely sensitive consciousness. It is of the
essence of the thinking consciousness that it should bind
together the successive moments of experience, that it
should look before and after, that it should know the past
and the future as well as the present. Did Socrates know
his own past — his own even, to say nothing of others'
past — as well as he knew his present? There is every
reason to believe that Socrates had forgotten much of his
early experience — some things probably (to avoid cavil)
which he might have remembered with advantage. Large
masses of his youthful experience had simply dropped
out ; they were as little recognised by him as belonging
to the same self of which he was now conscious as though
they had been the experiences of some other person. This
falls short of the perfect ideal of personality. Take the
test of moral choice. Socrates had a rational will, pur-
suing ends in which his Reason discerned value. But it
would be too much to say that a passion for " scoring off"
Sophists never mastered his judgment, and betrayed him
into remarks which upon reflection even he himself would
have recognised as not conducive to the discovery of truth
or to the attainment of his own true good. Thus the most
developed human consciousness seems to fall short of the
ideal which every human consciousness suggests to us.
An imperfect personality is the most that we can attribute
376 H. RASHDALL
VIII
even to the most richly endowed of human souls. If a
person rw aKpi^eardroi X07&) is to exist, such personality
must be found not in man but in some superior being —
as far as our knowledge goes, only, if at all, in God.
§ 9. But does any such consciousness as is commonly
understood to be implied by the term God really exist ?
Here once more I must assume an argument which I
have not leisure to develop. I must assume that my
readers are familiar with the argument by which Idealists
lead up to this idea of a Universal Self- consciousness.
The world, as Idealism holds itself to have proved, must
exist in a mind. Yet if Science is to be justified, it is
clear that its only esse cannot be in such minds as our own.
My own Reason, making inferences from my own ex-
perience, assures me that the world was when I was not —
when no human or sub-human ancestor of mine was there
to contemplate the molten planet or the contracting nebula.
I cannot understand my present experience without making
that assumption. There must then have been a conscious-
ness for which the world always existed. The very fact
that I know there are things which I do not know, and
that what I know I know but imperfectly, proves the
existence of a Universal Knower if to be (when applied
to a thing) = to be experienced. Idealism then proves
the existence of a Universal Thinker. And analogy-
would lead us to believe that we must attribute to the
Universal Thinker in perfection all those characteristics
which are implied by Personality, and which yet no
human person ever completely satisfied. Just the same
line of thought which infers that God knows perfectly the
world which we know imperfectly points to the belief that
He possesses perfectly the personality which we possess
imperfectly — that He is a being who thinks, who persists
throughout his successive experiences, who knows those
past experiences as well as the present, who distinguishes
Himself from the objects of his thought, who in particular
distinguishes Himself from all other consciousnesses, and,
finally, who wills, and wills in accordance with the con-
ception of an ideal end or good. I need hardly discuss
via PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 377
elaborately what God wills : by any one who admits the
idea of volition into his own conception of God at all it
will hardly be questioned that, if God wills, He must will
all, or at least (let us say for the present) everything that
is not willed by some lesser will. We are conscious of
objects which we know and will, and of others which we
know but do not will. God must will the object of his
own thought — i.e. the world.
§ 10. Why is the conception of Personality in God such
a stumbling-block ? Fully to state and meet these objec-
tions would be a Philosophy. I can only aim at suggest-
ing the bare headings (as it were) of some chapters which
such a Philosophy would contain.
(a) The first head of objection runs thus. To think
of God simply as a spirit or soul or self, distinguishable
from the world, is to forget that the human self knows
itself only at the same time and by the same act wherein
it knows the not-self. A self which knows nothing is a
mere abstraction. God therefore must not be thought of
as apart from the world. The world is as necessary to
God as God is to the world. I should quite admit that
the divine, like the human, Thinker must think objects :
but then I should contend that these objects must not be
understood as anything existing independently of the
knowing Ego. The self must distinguish itself from
something ; but that something need only be the changing
states of itself.1 Further, I should insist that all these
experiences or objects of the divine thought must be
conceived of as willed, no less than thought, and therefore
are not to be distinguished from God's own being in the
way in which the involuntary and often painful experiences
of ourselves have to be distinguished from the self which
knows them. To think of the world (with some Idealists)
as though it were an eternal complement to God — a sort
of Siamese twin to which He is eternally and inseparably
annexed but which is something other than the content of
1 I am dealing here only with the world of things. Objections might no
doubt be raised to the idea of a Universe in which one Self and his thoughts
were the sole Reality.
378 H. RASHDALL
VIII
his Will — is to forget our Idealism, and still more to forget
our " Monism." The Dualism is no less Dualism because
we are told that the subject is as necessary to the object
as the object to the subject, if the object be thought of
as something which exists quite independently of being
willed by the Mind which is compelled to know it but
which may yet (for anything that such a Philosophy has
to say to the contrary) be constrained to pronounce it
very bad. Such a view is none the less Dualism because
the object is understood to be an " object of thought "
and not the " matter " of the materialist. To say that
the subject is necessary to the object does not get rid
of the two principles : Ahriman was, I suppose, in the
Zoroastrian Philosophy regarded as necessary to Ormuzd.
Such a mode of thought really ends (as many of Green's
disciples have shown) in a naturalism which for all practical
purposes is indistinguishable from materialism. When
God ceases to be thought of as active power, He soon
comes to be regarded as merely an abstraction : if He is
still spoken of as " thought," that is merely an abstract
way of representing all the true thought of all the indi-
vidual thinkers in the Universe as if they were all held
together in a system by an actual consciousness. How-
ever abhorrent this tendency would have been to the
essentially religious mind of such a man as Green, that is
the natural development of a Philosophy which really
banishes the idea of activity not merely from its idea of
God but in truth from its conception of the Universe
as a whole.
§ i i. (^) But some will insist, not merely that God
must have a world to know, but that neither God nor the
world, nor the two taken together, can be regarded as the
Absolute being. God + His thoughts, Subject -f object
does not satisfy our demand for Unity. The Absolute
must be both subject and object. It must be that which
it knows. It must " transcend " the distinction between
subject and object. It must be both at once or a third
thing that is neither. To this I answer : " If all that is
meant is that what God knows (putting aside for the
vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 379
present other spirits and their experiences) must be in a
sense part of Himself, within His own being, I admit that
that is so (if what He thinks is also what He wills) but
I should contend that such an admission does not get
rid of the distinction between subject and object, nor is
it inconsistent with personality. If what is meant is that
there is a kind of third being unlike the only two kinds
of being which we have any reason to believe in — neither
thinker nor thought, neither subject nor object, neither
that which exists for self nor that which exists for other,
I answer that the supposition is wholly gratuitous : and
that it is, indeed, one to which no real meaning can be
attached. It is open to all the objections which have
been so copiously hurled at the Kantian ' Noumena,' at
the Spencerian ' Unknowable,' at the crude ' matter ' of
the ' naive Realist.' We don't really solve difficulties by
chucking contradictions 1 into the Absolute and saying
1 Be ye reconciled there, for we are quite sure ye cannot
be reconciled here.' Mr. Bradley's Philosophy of the
Absolute, however brilliant his genius, however invaluable
the stimulus which he has given to metaphysical thought
in the attempt to construct it, is (I venture to suggest) an
attempt to fuse two wholly contradictory and irreconcil-
able lines of thought — the idealistic and the Spinozistic.
The idea that thought (or thinker) can be an attribute or
adjective of something which is neither thought nor
thinker, is wholly inadmissible to one who sees, as clearly
as does Mr. Bradley, that nothing exists but experience.
812. (c) It is objected that we have no right to attribute
the idea of will to God. Of course there is much in our
experience of volition which belongs to our limitations —
sometimes even to our animal organisms. There is some-
times a disposition to find the essence of will in the sense
of effort — a mere matter of muscular sensation. But that
is not of the essence of will. Our volition (as we know
it) is the only experience which enables us to give concrete
embodiment to the purely a priori conception of Causality,
which includes both final cause and efficient cause. We
1 Not that in this case there is any real contradiction.
380 H. RASHDALL
VIII
know why a thing happened when we know (i) that it
realised an end which Reason pronounces to have value,
and (2) what was the force or (knowing all the abuses to
which that word is liable), I will say, the real being which
turned that end from a mere idea into an actuality, i.e.
the actual experience of some soul. Doubtless my
definition involves a circle : for Causality or activity is
an ultimate category which cannot be defined. If Idealism
be true, this force or active reality must be some kind of
conscious being : such an active consciousness as we are
aware of in ourselves will supply us with at least some-
thing more than a merely symbolical expression for the
union of force or power or activity with a consciously
apprehended end. Even apart from this argument from
Causality, the mere fact that mind, as we know it, is
always will as well as thought, would be a sufficient ground
for inferring by analogy that, if God be the supreme
source of being or Mind, He too must be Will no less
than Thought.
§ 1 3. (d) The idealistic argument, as here stated or rather
presupposed, leads us up to a view of the Universe which
finds all reality in souls and their experiences. It remains
to ask what is the relation between these souls or spirits.
To account for the world as a mere object of knowledge,
we have found it necessary to regard one of these spirits,
God, as omniscient and eternal, and therefore as sui
generis, incomparably superior to human intelligences with
their partial and limited knowledge and still more limited
capacities of action. We have found it necessary, more-
over, to regard Him as causative — as causing those ex-
periences of the other souls of which their own wills are
not the cause, and (since no human will is ever the whole
cause of anything) as co-operating in some sense with
whatever causality is exercised by human wills. What,
then, are we to say as to the relation between the supreme
volitional Intelligence and other volitional intelligences ?
Many will be disposed to think that the course of my
argument points in the direction of Pluralism — to the
hypothesis of many independent, underived intelligences,
vm PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 381
coeternal and uncreated. I have no a priori objection
or prejudice whatever against such a view if there were
sufficient grounds for postulating it. But I do not think
that our argument necessitates any such consequence. In
the first place Pluralism fails to account for the unity of
the world, not merely for the experienced uniformity of
nature (which is a postulate of Science but no necessity
of thought) but for the mere fact of the likeness
between different minds, the fact that we all think
in the same categories, etc. This might, indeed, be
regarded as an ultimate fact which cannot be
accounted for, but it tends to make the unity of the
world not only hard to account for but hard to understand.
In the second place, our souls in all their experiences are
dependent upon modifications of a bodily organism which
from our point of view must be regarded as due to the
thought and will of God : the dependence upon God of
the bodily organism carries with it the dependence upon
Him also of the spirits to which such bodies are organic.
To suppose the souls independent of God would involve
(as it seems to me) either the monstrous idea of a purely
casual coincidence between the retreating brow and the
limited intelligence or a no less appalling and arbitrary
scheme of pre-established harmony. And thirdly, the
whole contrast between the known limits of human
knowledge and the inferred Omniscience of God prepares
us by analogy for a corresponding contrast between an
eternal or unoriginated mind and minds which are
originated and dependent. The mind whose knowledge
is partial and progressive may well have a beginning.
Experience gives us no evidence for pre-existence, and we
are not justified in going beyond experience except in so
far as is necessary to explain experience. Moreover, pre-
existence is a hypothesis which presupposes the waters of
Lethe or some similar Mythology.1 I infer, then, that the
human mind, like all minds, is derived from the one
supreme Mind. As attempts to express this relation, I
1 I do not mean that such a conception is impossible or absurd, but that it is
gratuitous.
82 H. RASHDALL
VIII
have no objection to the fashionable phrases " partial
communication to us of the divine thought," " partial
reproduction of the divine consciousness," " limited modes
of the universal self-consciousness," " emanations from the
divine Mind," and so on, provided they are not used to
evade the admission that the fact of such reproductions
occurring must be regarded as no less due to the divine
will than the first appearance and the gradual development
of the bodily organism by which those reproductions are
conditioned. But I do not know that such expressions
are any improvement upon the old biblical phrase that
man was created by God in his own image and after his
own likeness.
§ 14. (<?) Leaving the question of origin, how are we
to conceive the relation between God and man when the
latter is once in being ? Having repudiated the pluralistic
tendency to make other souls independent of God, I must
go on to justify Pluralism as against Monism in its view
of the separateness and distinctness of the individual self-
consciousness from God when once in existence and so
long as it exists. The argument by which Monism makes
the human soul (in some one of innumerable different
meanings or shades of meaning) a part or an element of,
or aspect of, and therefore in some sense as identical with
the Divine, seems to me to be grounded upon one supreme
fallacy. I detect that fallacy in almost every line of
almost every Hegelian thinker (if I may say so with all
respect) whom I have read,1 and of many who object
to that designation. That fallacy is the assumption
that what constitutes existence for others is the same
as what constitutes existence for self.2 A thing is as
<?>
J Of course this does not apply to the individualistic Hegelianism of Mr.
McTaggart which he has shown strong reason for believing was the Hegelianism
of Hegel.
2 This charge could, I believe, be illustrated over and over again out of
Professor Royce's The World and the Individual, the ablest attempt yet made
to think out the theory of a common Consciousness including individual selves.
The confusion is fostered by the author's tendency to speak of the self as a
" meaning." "I, the individual, am what I am by virtue of the fact that my
intention, my meaning, my wish, my desire, my hope, my life, stand in contrast
to those of any other individual " (loc. cit. p. 426). Here it is not clear whether
' the meaning ' implies the meaning as forming the content of knowledge or the
vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 383
it is known : its esse is to be known : what it is for the
experience of spirits, is its whole reality: it is that
and nothing more. But the esse of a person is to know
himself, to be for himself, to feel and to think for himself,
to act on his own knowledge, and to know that he acts.
In dealing with persons, therefore, there is an unfathom-
able gulf between knowledge and reality. What a person
is for himself is entirely unaffected by what he is for any
other, so long as he does not know what he is for that
other. No knowledge of that person by another, however
intimate, can ever efface the distinction between the mind
as it is for itself, and the mind as it is for another. The
essence of a person is not what he is for another, but what
he is for himself. It is there that his principium individua-
tionis is to be found — in what he is, when looked at from
the inside. All the fallacies of our anti- individualist
thinkers come from talking as though the essence of a
person lay in what can be known about him, and not in
his own knowledge, his own experience of himself. And
that, in turn, arises largely from the assumption that
knowledge, without feeling or will, is the whole of Reality.
Of course, I do not mean to deny that a man is made
what he is (in part) by his relations to other persons,
but no knowledge of these relations by any other than
himself is a knowledge which can constitute what he is
to himself. However much I know of another man, and
however much by the likeness of my own experience,
by the acuteness of the interpretation which I put upon
his acts and words, by the sympathy which I feel for
him — I may know of another's inner life, that life is for
meaning as forming part of the individual's consciousness. If the former, there
is nothing intrinsically absurd in the supposition that two individuals should have
exactly the same meaning, and yet remain two. Or if they do not, there is no
difference between them, and the (even apparent) individuality of the individual
self disappears. In the latter case there will be as many meanings as there are
selves, no matter how much alike they may be. Professor Royce seems habitually
to ignore exactly the differentia of Consciousness. He constantly assumes that
to be in relation with another being is to be identical with that being (just as a
thing undoubtedly is constituted by its relations), that the individuality of the self
differs in nothing from the individuality of a star (I.e. p. 432), that the individuality
of the self lies in what it is for God. (" The self is in itself real. It possesses
individuality. And it possesses this individuality, as we have seen, in God and
for God," I.e. p. 433)
384 H. RASHDALL
V11I
ever a thing quite distinct from me the knovver of it.1
My toothache is for ever my toothache only," and can
never become yours ; and so is my love for another
person, however passionately I may desire — to use that
metaphor of poets and rhetoricians which imposes upon
mystics, and even upon philosophers — to become one with
the object of my love : for that love would cease to be if
the aspiration were literally fulfilled. If per impossibile
two disembodied spirits, or selves, were to go through
exactly the same experiences — knew, felt, and willed
always alike — still they would be two, and not one.3 The
fact that ive should not be able to say anything about
the difference could not alter the fact ; for with persons
(once again) what they are for the knowledge of others
does not constitute the whole of their reality. But each
of them would know the difference between his own ex-
perience and his knowledge of the other's experience ;
and each of us, being a separate self, would know that
each of these two must know it, but we could not know
what it is except in so far as each of us might know that
1 I cannot here further analyse how we obtain this knowledge.
2 Mr. Bradley contends that the Absolute may feel all our pains and yet not
feel them as pain (like the discord in Music which only increases the harmony),
but then / do feel it as pain. Could any defence give away the case more hope-
lessly, or show more convincingly that I feel something which is not the Absolute's
feeling ?
:! If this is not self-evident, let me add the following argument. It is admitted
that two such spirits might have like but not identical experiences [i.e. experience
in which there was some identity but some difference) without ceasing to be two.
Let us suppose the content of the consciousness of each to become gradually
more and more like that of the other, including all the time the knowledge of the
other's existence. Can it be seriously contended that as the last remaining differ-
ence disappeared, that consciousness in A of not being B would suddenly disappear
too ? Of course it may be said that the consciousness of not being B is part of
the content of A's consciousness. If so, of course the case supposed could not
possibly arise, and the difficulty disappears. But still the difference between A
and B would be absolutely unrecognisable and indescribable for any other con-
sciousness, although such a consciousness might know that there were two beings
with such contents of consciousness identical but for the knowledge by each that
he was not the other. Or again let me take the case of two consciousnesses not
knowing of each other's existence, but having (as a third mind is aware) nearly
identical experiences. Let us suppose two very elementary minds, whose ex-
perience should be confined as nearly as is possible to present sensation. Let
us suppose the pain they suffer to become more and more alike. Will it be
gravely said that if for a moment the throbs which filled each consciousness
became the same (i.e. same in content, as known but not felt by the third mind),
that mind would have to pronounce that there were two throbs no longer, but
only one ? °
viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 385
it is like, or analogous to, the difference between what he
is for himself, and what he knows of the self that seems
to be likest him.
§15. Mr. Bradley's objections to ascribing reality to the
Self really, I venture to think, spring in great part from the
same root. That the self includes the not-self as known to
me is true enough. So long as the "not-self" is a mere
thing, it has no reality apart from what it is to me and
other selves. What it is for me, is in a sense part of me.
When the not-self is a person, the knowledge of that self
is part of my experience, and so (if you like it) in a sense
part of me ; but that does not show that there is not a
something which he is for himself, which is no part at
all of me, and which is as real as I am. In so far as
I know what he is in his own self-knowledge, of course
there is an identity between what he is for me (part of
my ego) and what he is for himself (part of his ego), but
this identity is a mere abstraction, the identity of a Uni-
versal. Mr. Bradley cannot usually be accused of mistak-
ing such abstractions for reality. Of course if " real " is
to mean "out of all relation to anything outside itself,"
then it is obvious on the face of it — without 500 pages
of argument — that nothing can be real except the whole.
But that is not the usual sense of " real," and if the words
be used in other than their usual sense, Mr. Bradley's
paradoxes sink into something not so very far removed
from platitudes. Undoubtedly the self is not what it is
apart from its relations to other selves ; but, unless those
relations to other selves as they are for other are the whole
of its being, the self may be real without being the whole
of Reality. It is only in the case of a thing that its
relations to some other mind as known to that other con-
stitute the whole of its reality. If "reality" be taken to
mean self-sufficing reality, a being underived from and
independent of all other beings, we may admit that such
reality cannot be ascribed to the finite self, and can only
be ascribed to the whole — to the whole kingdom of selves
taken in their relation to one another and to God, who is
one of the selves and the source of them. We do not
2 C
386 H. RASHDALL vhi
get to any fuller or deeper Reality by supposing an
existence in which God or the Absolute no longer dis-
tinguishes himself from the selves, or the selves from
God. Without any such unintelligible confusion there will
remain a very real sense in which the being of the
originated souls may be regarded as derived from, and
even if you like, therefore, in the sense of forming objects
of the divine thought, included in the Divine Being. But
if we use such language, we must make it plain that the
knowledge of the finite self by God does not exhaust its
being as is the case with the mere object. It is the
knowledge of them that is in God. God must know the
self as a self which has a consciousness, an experience,
a will which is its own — that is, as a being which is not
identical with the knowledge that He has of it.
In short, all the conclusions which are applicable to
each particular self in his relation to another seem to be
equally applicable to the relations between God and any
other Spirit. Undoubtedly God may, must have an
infinitely deeper and completer knowledge of every one
of us than any one of us has of another — nay, a pro-
founder knowledge of each of us than each of us has of
himself, for each of us forgets ; each of us knows his past
self only by means of abstractions — abstract generalities
which (as Mr. Bradley has taught us) are so far off from
the realities — the half-remembered half-forgotten colour
or sound, joy or sorrow which they symbolise ; still less
does he know all his yet unrealised capacities or poten-
tialities. Each of us is but imperfectly personal. God alone
(as Lotze maintained) fully realises the ideal of person-
ality ; and that higher personality — that complete know-
ledge of self — must carry with it much more knowledge
of other selves than to us is possible. How God knows
what I feel without having actually felt the like, I do not
know: but there is nothing in the supposition so inherently
self-contradictory as there is in the idea that God feels what
I feel at this moment and yet that there is only one feeling
at this moment and not two. The only analogy that
seems available is the fact that I can know what I once
vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 387
felt, though I feel it no longer. Doubtless God cannot be
thought of as attaining his knowledge of other selves by
the clumsy processes of inference or analogy by which
we so imperfectly enter into the consciousness of others :
doubtless pleasure, pain, colour, sound, volition must be
in God something different from what they are to us.
And yet even for God such a knowledge of other selves
must be in some way dependent upon a likeness {i.e.
partial identity of content) between his experience and
ours. God must be thought of as feeling pleasure — yes,
and (as far as I see) pain also, or something like pain,
as loving persons and hating evil, as willing the good
and so on. Say, if you will, that such terms applied to
God are mere symbols. But then so (I should contend),
in a sense, is " thought." God's thought can as little be
exactly what our thought is as our joys and sorrows can
be exactly what his are. Yet imperfect knowledge is
still knowledge, or we should have to confess that we
know nothing at all. And it is arbitrary out of the
three distinguishable but inseparable and mutually
dependent aspects or activities of self-conscious being
as known to us — will, thought, feeling — to select one,
namely thought (which by itself is a mere abstraction),
and to call that God. I need not further insist on the
arbitrariness of this procedure : the imperishable value
of Mr. Bradley's " Appearance and Reality " lies largely
in its exposure of it. God, if He is to be known at all, must
be known as a Trinity — Potentia, Sapientia, Bonitas or
Voluntas, as the Schoolmen (in this matter so much more
rational and intelligible than later theologians) consistently
maintained.1 God must then, it would seem, know other
selves by the analogy of what He is Himself; He could
not (it is reasonable to infer) have created beings wholly
unlike Himself. His knowledge of other selves may be
perfect knowledge without his ever being or becoming
the selves which He knows. His being must, if this is
1 I only suggest an analogy between the traditional doctrine in its scholastic
and philosophical form and that which I suggest. To make them identical, we
must take Potentia to = Will, and include the element of feeling in Bonitas.
388 H. RASHDALL vin
all that you mean by the phrase, " penetrate " their inmost
being. But to talk of one self-conscious being including
or containing in himself or being identical with other
selves is to use language which is (as it appears to me)
wholly meaningless and self-contradictory, for the essence
of being a self is to distinguish oneself from other selves.
Such theories are just one instance of that all-fertile source
of philosophical error — the misapplication of spacial meta-
phors. Minds are not Chinese boxes which can be put
' inside ' one another. And if it be answered that the
higher Unity that is to transcend the difference between
God and other selves, between selves and things, must
therefore not be a self, I answer that we know of no form
of ultimately real being except the self. To talk of other
" beings " which are not selves is as unmeaning as to talk
about beings which do not exist. That being which is
not for a self is a self; and it is only in a restricted and
popular and not in a strictly philosophical sense that 'being'
can be attributed to that which merely is for other. The
real is that which is for itself, and every spirit or con-
sciousness (in its measure and degree) is for itself.
§ 16. Is the question raised " How can one Self know
another self not merely as it is for other but as it is for
itself?" It might be enough to plead that the difficulty is
not made one whit less difficult by the theory of a universal
Consciousness which includes all particular selves. Even
if this theory helped to explain how the Universal
self knows the particular self and the particular self the
Universal self, it would not explain how one particular
self knows another particular self. You may say that
each particular self really is each other particular self, and
is therefore inside it and not outside it. But then how
does one self appear to be outside the other ? Where is
the distinction between them ? And why does not one
self not know all about each and every other self as it
is for itself? I cannot really profess much sympathy
with the supposed difficulty about explaining how we
know other Selves. It seems to me an ultimate part of
our experience that from our self-knowledge we do by
viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 389
inference infer the existence of other selves which are for
themselves as well as for us ; and Philosophy has nothing
to do but to record and systematise the way we actually
think. In my thought the idea of a being which is for
itself as well as for me is quite clearly distinguishable
from that of a being which is only for me. The fact that
I think it, is the only possible argument to show that it
can be thought. Of course it is possible to deny the
validity of the inferences by which I reach this result.
I do not propose to discuss this question further, but will
only say that Solipsism can be made just as plausible
from one philosophical point of view as from another :
like Scepticism it admits of no decisive refutation, but
carries no conviction. The only philosophies that can
justly be taunted with a tendency towards Solipsism are
the systems which fail to distinguish between know-
ledge and other aspects of being, especially feeling ; and
under this category may be placed not only the Sensation-
alism which merges knowledge in feeling, but also the
Intellectualism which merges feeling in knowledge. If I
cannot distinguish between my feeling and my knowledge
that I feel, naturally I cannot know that another feels ;
and when we have abstracted from my total consciousness
the feeling -element, the knowledge-element taken by
itself can be very plausibly identified with the mere
abstract content of knowledge, which is no doubt
precisely the same for any number of Selves who think
the same thing, and therefore the same for God and for
the other minds whom God knows but is not. It may be
plausibly identified with it, but it is not really the same
thing. For there will still remain the difference between
the content of my knowledge and the actual knowing
consciousness. The knowledge taken apart from the
feeling and the willing is no doubt an abstraction ; it is
only an aspect of the single Ego that feels, wills, and
knows. The confusion has arisen largely from the
ambiguity of the word " thought." Thought may mean
" the content that is thought," or it may mean " the
consciousness which thinks." The content of two people's
390 H. RASHDALL
VIII
thought may be the same : but the consciousness that
thinks in the two cases is different. Every experience as
such is unique : the content abstracted from the experi-
ence itself is always a universal, and may therefore be
common to any number of such experiences as well as to
minds which share the knowledge without having had
similar experiences.1 And it is not only the content of
another's experience that I can know, but the fact that
there is a real self which has that experience. Even in
the case of selves with precisely similar experiences, I
can know that there were one, two, or more of such
beings. But it is not my knowledge of each self that
makes it a self; neither does my inability to recognise
any but a numerical difference between them telescope
them into one. The difficulty has been largely manu-
factured by the habit of philosophers of speaking of all
that I know as a " non-ego " without taking any account
of the difference between the "non-ego" which is an
" ego " and the " non-ego " which is only what I or other
minds know about it.
§ 17. Do you say that all this makes God finite ? Be it
so, if you will. Everything that is real is in that sense
finite. God is certainly limited by all other beings in the
Universe, that is to say, by other selves, in so far as He
is not those selves. He is not limited, as I hold, by
anything which does not ultimately proceed from his own
Nature or Will or Power. That power is doubtless
limited, and in the frank recognition of this limitation of
1 Often of course, as Mr. Bradley has shown so impressively, this generalised
content reproduces or represents but very imperfectly the actual experience — even
in the case of the thinker's own past experiences. That is particularly of course
with pleasures and pains, the memory of which is not necessarily pleasant or
painful at all. Yet it is an exaggeration to say that we cannot know in any
degree what a past pleasure or pain was like, and equally so that we know nothing
of what other people's pleasures and pains are to them. Pleasure and pain them-
selves belong to the uniqueness of consciousness : their generalised content may
be known to many minds, and the fact that no pleasure necessarily enters into the
idea of a pleasure, and that (still more certainly) no pain into the idea of a pain is
an impressive exhibition of the difference between knowledge and reality. The
champions of an inclusive consciousness have never found a difficulty in the
uniqueness of two exactly similar experiences of the same person (experiences of
which the content is the same) because of the difference in the time-relations of
the two : but there is nothing in the nature of time to exclude the simultaneous
existence of two or more unique experiences.
vni PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 391
power lies the only solution of the problem of Evil which
does not either destroy the goodness of God or destroy
moral distinctions altogether. He is limited by his own
eternal, if you like " necessary " nature — a nature which
wills eternally the best which that nature has in it to
create. The limitation is therefore what Theologians have
often called a self-limitation : provided only that this limita-
tion must not be regarded as an arbitrary self-limitation,
but as arising from the presence of that idea of the best
that is eternally present to a will whose potentialities are
limited — that idea of the best which to Platonising
Fathers and Schoolmen became the Second Person of the
Holy Trinity. The truth of the world is then neither
Monism, in the pantheising sense of the word, nor
Pluralism : the world is neither a single Being, nor many
co-ordinate and independent Beings, but a One Mind who
gives rise to many. We may of course, if we choose,
describe the whole collection of these beings as One
Reality, with enough capital letters to express the unction
which that numeral appears to carry with it for some
minds ; but after all the Reality, whether eternally or
only at one particular stage of its development, is a
community of Persons.
§18. The embarrassment of my language at this point
will make it plain that I am getting myself entangled
in another question more difficult, and more momentous
even in its ultimate implications, than the question of
Personality — that is, the question of Time. Is Time
objective or subjective ? Is the Absolute in time, or is
time in the Absolute? A hasty or unconsidered treat-
ment of such questions would be useless. I have
endeavoured, while assuming that the individual self
is in time, to avoid language which is necessarily in-
consistent with the position that God is " out of time."
I will only add here that a full investigation of this
question might lead us to the conclusion, that, just as we
have seen reason to insist that any sense in which the
divine knowledge penetrates the individual consciousness
must be a sense which leaves to the individual his full
392 H. RASHDALL
VIII
individuality, personality, reality, so any sense in which
we might find it necessary to admit that the divine
knowledge transcends the distinctions of past, present,
and future, any sense in which God is (to use the
medieval expression) supra tempus must be a sense which
is compatible with leaving to the time-consciousness in
which individuals undoubtedly live, true reality likewise,
though there may and must undoubtedly be aspects of
this reality which we do not fully understand.
8 19. The indisposition to admit that souls have an
existence which is not merged in that of God, seems to
arise largely from the fact that philosophers have imposed
upon themselves and others by the trick of simply assuming
(without proof) an identity between God and the philo-
sophical " Absolute," and then arguing that if any of the
attributes ascribed by theology or religion or common-
sense to God are inconsistent with what is implied in the
conception of " the Absolute," no such being as the God
of Religion can exist. Personality is undoubtedly incon-
sistent with the idea of the Absolute or Infinite Being,
and therefore it is assumed that God is not personal.
The arguments of Idealism really, as it seems to me, go
to prove that over and above our souls there does exist
such a Being as Theologians, except when they have
unintelligently aped the language of philosophies not
their own, have commonly understood by God. The
Absolute, therefore, if we must have a phrase which
might well be dispensed with, consists of God and the
souls, including, of course, all that God and those souls
know or experience. The Absolute is not a simple
aggregate formed of these spirits, as each of them is if
taken apart from the rest, but a society in which each
must be taken with all its relations to the rest — as being
what it is for itself together with what it is for other.
This leaves quite open the question what is the nature
of those relations. It will be quite as true that ' the
Absolute is a society ' in our view as it is in the view of
the Pluralists who make souls coeternal with God, or as
in the view of Mr. McTaggart, who makes Reality consist
viii PERSONALITY: HUMAN AND DIVINE 393
of eternal souls without God.1 Only in our view God
at a certain point of time caused the souls to exist ; or
(if we please) by an eternal act causes that at a certain
time they shall appear in the time-series. The Absolute,
we may say, becomes a Society ; or, if we like to think
of everything that is to be as having an existence already
in some sense in the Absolute, we may say that the
Absolute eternally is a God who persists throughout time
(or, if it be so, a God who is supra tempus) together with
selves who are eternally present to the mind of God, but
who begin to have their real being, in accordance with
His will, at particular moments of time.
1 I have very much sympathy with Mr. McTaggart's criticism of the usual
Hegelian idea of God as a consciousness including other consciousnesses. (See
especially Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, pp. 60, 61.) I must not attempt to
examine his position now, but will briefly indicate where it seems to me defective.
Besides all the difficulties involved in the idea of pre-existent souls, it is open to
this objection. Mr. McTaggart (whatever we may say of the " Pluralists ") feels
that the world must be a Unity, that it consists not merely of souls but of related
and interconnected souls which form a system. But a system for whom ? The
idea of a system which is not " for" any mind at all is not open to an Idealist ;
and the idea of a world each part of which is known to some mind but is not
known as a whole to any one mind is almost equally difficult. Where then, in
his view, is the Mind that knows the whole, i.e. the whole system of souls with
the content of each ? The difficulty could only be met by making out that each
soul is omniscient, and perhaps this is really Mr. McTaggart's meaning. If so,
the difficulty of making each soul as an extra-temporal reality omniscient, while
as occupying a position in the time-series it is all the time ignorant of much, is one
which needs no pointing out. In short, I hold that the ordinary idealistical
arguments for a Mind which knows and wills the whole are not invalidated by
Mr. McTaggart's criticism ; while I can only cordially accept his extraordinarily
able and convincing criticism of the position that the supreme mind is the whole.
THE END
Printed by R. & R. Ci.ark, Limited, Edinburgh.
WORKS ON ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS.
A HANDBOOK OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. By Rev. HENRY
Caldervvood, LL.D. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
A SHORT STUDY OF ETHICS. By Charles F. D'Arcy, B.D.
Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
ELEMENTS OF METAPHYSICS. Being a Guide for Lectures
and Private Use. By Dr. Paul Deussen. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY. Edited
by Dr. James Mark Baldwin. With Illustrations and Extensive
Bibliographies. In 3 vols. Large 8vo. Vol. I. A to Law. 21s. net.
OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, BASED ON THE
DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. By John Fiske. 2 vols. 8vo. 25s.
THE IDEA OF GOD AS AFFECTED BY MODERN KNOW-
LEDGE. By John Fiske. Globe 8vo. 3s. 6d.
PROGRESSIVE MORALITY : An Essay in Ethics. By Thomas
Fowler, D.D., LL.D., F.S. A. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3s.net.
GENETIC PHILOSOPHY. By President David J. Hill. Crown
8vo. 7s. net.
A HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY : A Sketch of the
History of Philosophy from the Close of the Renaissance to our own Day.
By Dr. Harald Hoffding. Translated from the German by B. E.
Meyer. 2 vols. 8vo. 15s. net each.
THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION, and other Essays illustrating the
Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism. By Prof. G. H. Howison.
Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
PRACTICAL IDEALISM. By W. de Witt Hyde, President of
Bowdoin College. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY FOR ENGLISH
READERS. By J. P. Mahaffy, D.D., and J. H. Bernard, B.D.
2 vols. Crown 8vo. — Vol. I. The Kritik of Pure Reason Explained and
Defended. 7s. 6d.— Vol. II. Prolegomena. Translated, with Notes and
Appendices. 6s.
KANT'S KRITIK OF JUDGMENT. Translated by J. H. Bernard,
D.D. 8vo. 1 os. net.
THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. By Immanuel Kant.
Translated by F. Max Muller. With Introduction by Ludwig Noire.
2 vols. 8vo. Vol. I. Historical Introduction, by Ludwig Noire, etc. 16s.
Vol. II. Critique of Pure Reason. 15s. net.
ASPECTS OF THEISM. By William A. Knight, LL.D.
8vo. 8s. 6d.
NEW ESSAYS CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.
By Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Translated by G. A. Langley.
Extra Crown 8vo. 14s. net.
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
WORKS ON ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS.
FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD. The Appeal to Biology
or Evolution for Human Guidance. By the Rev. Robert Mackintosh,
B.D., M.A. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
PAIN, PLEASURE, AND .ESTHETICS. An Essay concerning
the Psychology of Pain and Pleasure, with special. reference to ^Esthetics.
By Henry Rutgers Marshall, M.A. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
^ESTHETIC PRINCIPLES. By the same Author. Crown 8vo.
5s. net.
INSTINCT AND REASON. An Essay concerning the Relation
of Instinct to Reason, with some special study of the Nature of Religion.
By the same Author. 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
RECENT BRITISH PHILOSOPHY. A Review, with Criticisms,
including some Comments on Mr. Mills' Answer to Sir William Hamilton.
By David Masson, M.A., LL.D. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
PHILOSOPHICAL REMAINS OF R. L. NETTLESHIP.
Edited, with Biographical Sketch, by Prof. A. C. Bradley. Second
Edition. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
LECTURES ON THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. By R. L.
Nettleship. Edited by G. R. Benson. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
A SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHIC
THOUGHT FROM THALES TO KANT. By Ludwig Noire.
8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
By Arthur Kenyon Rogers, Ph.D. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. net.
STUDENTS' HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By A. K. Rogers,
Ph. D. Extra Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
THE WORLD AND THE INDIVIDUAL. Gifford Lectures'.
By Josiah Royce, Ph.D. Extra Crown 8vo. First Series. 12s.6d.net.
Second Series. 12s. 6d. net.
THE METHODS OF ETHICS. By the late Prof.HENRY Sidgwick.
Sixth Edition, revised. 8vo. 14s. net.
OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF ETHICS FOR ENGLISH
READERS. By the same Author. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
THE PROBLEM OF CONDUCT. A Study in the Phenomenology
of Ethics. By A. E. Taylor. 8vo. 10s. net.
ANCIENT IDEALS. A Study of Intellectual and Spiritual Growth
from Early Times to the Establishment of Christianity. By Henry
Osborn Taylor. 2 vols. 8vo. 21s. net.
A REVIEW OF THE SYSTEMS OF ETHICS FOUNDED ON
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. By C. M. Williams. Crown 8vo.
1 2s. net.
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. With especial reference to the
Formation and Development of its Problems and Conceptions. By Dr.
W. Windelband. Translated by J. H. Tufts. 8vo. 21s.net.
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
Ui9\NQ LIST AUG 3 01348
r-
o
o
V0
(D «H
CD
co
-P o
c/3
1
(0
o P*
University of Toroi
Library
DO NOT
REMOVE
THE
CARD
FROM
THIS
POCKET
Acme Library Card Poc
LOWE-MARTIN CO. L™
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11